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HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. 

Boston and New York. 



HITHERTO 


A STORY OF YESTERDAYS 



Mrs. a. D. T. WHITNEY 

If 



/y / 

BOSTON AND NEW YORK ^ ' 
HOUGHTON, MIFP'LIN AND COMPANY 
(€f)e pre0s, CambnD0e 

1893 





Copyright, 1869 and 1893, 

By MRS. A. D, T. WHITNEY. 

All rights reserved. 



The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass.. U.S. A. 
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Co. 


PREFACE TO EDITION OF 1893. 


I HAD just read a book which I felt had a mischief 
in it. Now, mis-chief is precisely the missing of the 
chief in anything; the high truth and end of it. The 
story I had read missed, and misled concerning, the 
true end of life and its discipline, in the great matter 
^of marriage. I thought I should like to try writing 
another that might help to mend such damage. And 
so I set to work upon “Hitherto.” 

I think it has touched some experiences ; it has said 
its little loyal say, at any rate. 

The world is sadly yet in need of mending; restor- 
ing, — not patching, which so often rends away the 
old. If “Hitherto” illustrates, as it seeks to do, the 
leading and the revelation of life for the blind side 
and the “silent side,” — and how the marriage train- 
ing here is so often hut a training for the perfect 
union that is not yet, but is to come, — it still has 
its own glad, willing bit of work to do. 

A. D. T. W. 


Milton, 1893. 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER PAGE 

I. What Anstiss Dolbeare remembers . . 1 

II. Punishment 21 

III. Some People, and Other People ... 37 

IV. What a Voice tells 50 

V. Jasper 58 

VI. A Thread brought up 74 

VII. One of These Days 84 

VIII. Harm’s Providence 102 

IX. What Anstiss Dolbeare remembers . . Ill 

X. On the Housetop 142 

XI. What a Voice tells 157 

XII. Blank Verse; and Clover .... 172 

XIII. What Anstiss Dolbeare remembers . . 190 

XIV. Red Hill 203 

XV. Outside 226 

XVI. The East Door — at Night .... 236 

XVII. Telling Aunt Ildy 255 

XVIII. Boston, and the Holgates .... 282 

XIX. Sartor Resartus 294 

XX. .Esthetic Tea 310 

XXI. The Silent Side 333 

XXII. Safe and Well 341 

XXIII. Winter Days 351 


VI 


CONTENTS. 


XXIV. What a Voice tells 362 

XXV. Out at the Ledges 369 

XXVI. Down the Pine Lane 390 

XXVII. Anstiss Hathaway 401 

XXVIII. Up the River 412 

XXIX. Home 421 

XXX. Satisfied ? 426 

XXXI. The Silent Side 433 

XXXH. Nansie’s Ways; why should n’t she ? . . 438 

XXXHI. The Great Mowing 444 

XXXIV. Light 453 

XXXV. Thorns 466 

XXXVI. Hope’s Witness 472 

XXXVII. What Hope told Richard. . . . 478 

XXXVHI. Blind Ferns 485 

XXXIX. The “Next” for Hope .... 491 

XL. Undertow 500 

: XLI. Saved ; yet — 513 

XLH. So AS BY Fire . . . . ' . . . 522 

XLHI. Indian Summer 530 

XLIV. From over the Sea 534 

XLV. To-day 541 


/ 


i£22 

4 3)5 


HITHEETO. 


CHAPTER I. 


WHAT ANSTISS DOLBEAEE REMEMBERS. 


PROSE. 


“To-day ” is a strange word. The point a life has 
got to, beyond which it must pierce the dark; behind 
which lies its own trail of light, born of its own move- 
ment, and showing — always behind — what it has 
truly meant and been. 

The point the world has got to; where the blaze 
and t\e mist, the dazzle and confusion, are about it, 
that come of its greater rush, like the burst of a me- 
teor heading across the skies. 



In the blaze and mist of this “to-day,” things are 
seen false and distorted. People are in too great a 
hurry to tell of to-day; they ought to wait, in some 
things, till it has become yesterday. 

I think it would be a good thing if some old woman 
were to tell a story, — if anybody, that is, young or 
old, could ever really tell a whole one. This is a thing 
which it is not possible truly to do. Stories in this 
world tell themselves by halves. There is always a 
silent side; many silent sides, perhaps; for lives run 
on together, overlap and interlace, and none can tell 
the life of another. That is one thing we find out as 
our to-days turn into yesterdays. Finding it out, we 
grow wiser concerning ourselves. 

Therefore, and for other reasons, I believe it would 


2 


HITHERTO. 


be good for some old woman, in such fashion as she 
could, to tell a story; and that it is time it were done. 
Women, and men too, are so apt to cry out when the 
first stress of their life is upon them ; to give their raw 
pain and passion utterance. The world is full of such 
outpourings. 

What can a girl of twenty know, that she should 
try to say what disappointment and endurance are, and 
what they come to; that she should scribble of the 
deep, inner things, the soul-instincts and affinities, 
and the God-leadings, and the ends ? Let her put her 
hand in his, and he led, for years and years ; and then 
let her, if she can and dare, look back upon those 
yesterdays and speak. I think the world would hear 
a rijDer and a different story. I think it would truly 
get a novel., then. 

I could not write a romance if I would. All my 
life long I have been living prose ; like the bourgeois 
gentilhomme, not knowing either what a grand thing 
that was. 

I meant poetry. I longed and yearned for it. I 
tried to shape and measure the weary lines ; I could 
never make them stately, or pure musical. They were 
full of “ands” and “buts, ” and long, dry sentences 
of common words. 

I learned at last to read them patiently, and so God’s 
meaning came, which glorified them. 

If there were any glimpse of poetry in my early 
childhood, it all lay between the back doorstep and 
the head of the Long Lane. 

I used to get out there when the dishes were wiped 
up, or the seam was sewn; perhaps in the still of a 
starlit evening when nobody knew where I was. I felt 
then, in the magnifying gloom, as if I had got away 
into the wide world. The world? Among the worlds. 

I used to wish they would just let me be little in 


WHAT ANSTISS DOLBEARE REMEMBERS. 3 


peace. It was always, “You are too big a girl, An- 
stiss, for that; ” “You are too old not to know how to 
do this.” It began before I was seven; I used to 
think I must have been born too big and too old. 

By “they” I mean, especially. Aunt Ildy. We 
always do, I think, instinctively individualize, some- 
how, that third person plural. 

I never knew the whole of Aunt Ildy’s name. I 
believe she was secretly ashamed of it herself. If she 
had not been, she would never have allowed herself to 
be called as she was, for she despised nicknames. 
She scrupulously gave me the hard whole of mine. It 
would have put a different complexion upon days and 
weeks, if once in a while in them, perhaps on a holiday 
afternoon, she would have said “Annie.” When I 
was very bad, she called me “Anstiss Z>oZ-beare! ” I 
have wondered whether hers might have been Ilde- 
gonde, or Hildegarde; or if people, indeed, ever got 
stories from the German as long ago as she was born. 
Her other name was appropriate enough. “Miss 
Chism ” snapped you up in the very speaking. Some- 
how, you could not waste words with a woman of that 
name. She would not have let you, be assured. She 
never let anybody waste anything; time, or bread- 
crumbs, or feelings. I learned that young enough. 

I remember a morning when I sat down on the back 
doorstep with a damp dish-towel across my lap, which 
I was to have spread upon a gooseberry bush. I sat 
listening to the grasshoppers close by, — for it was 
still in the lane, — and now and then to a far-off 
sound of music, or of guns. Listening also, as I al- 
ways was, mechanically and with a dread, for the 
sharp call that was sure to come after me. 

“Anstiss! ” 

“ Oh, Aunt 1 ” I cried, remonstrating for once ; 
“it ’s the Fourth of July! ” 


4 


HITHEBTO, 


“Well, the world’s got to keep turning round, if 
’t is; or else it ’ll never be the fifth! ” 

That was all it seemed to amount to with her. 
That dishes should be washed after the beds were 
made; that dinner should he got after the house was 
swept ; that the ironing should he done after the wash- 
ing, and the mending after the ironing; that the fifth 
of July should come after the fourth; that things 
should just keep turning, whether anything turned out 
or not. I used to wish there would be a fire or an 
earthquake; anything that would joggle Aunt Ildy, 
and so shake up the dreary order of affairs that they 
might perchance settle back into relations a little dif- 
ferent. I should have liked to hear “Puss in the cor- 
ner! ” cried somehow into my life, and to have seen 
what would have come of that. 

What really was unusual in my lot — what would 
have been at least pathetic with any other — seemed 
to me the most prosaic and commonplace of all. I 
was an orphan, and so I lived with Uncle Royle, and 
Aunt Ildy “took charge” of me. To have had a 
father and a mother and a home, — that would have 
been the really poetical thing. 

The Edgells lived over the way; across the lane, 
that is, the garden gates being opposite. Their house 
fronted on Middle Street, as ours on River Street. 
Main Street cut straight across both at the end of the 
lane, running up the hill from the waterside to the 
Old Meeting-house. Main Street and River Street 
had sidewalks and shops; Middle Street was shady 
and quiet, with nice dwellings and white-fenced front 
yards, and brown graveled footways under the trees. 
Uncle Royle might have had a house on Middle Street 
if he had chosen, or even at South Side, across the 
river, where a few fine country seats had made the 
beginning of an aristocratic neighborhood ; for he was 


WBAT ANSTISS BOLBEABE REMEMBERS. 5 

well-to-do; but he chose to “keep his store,” and be 
still better-to-do ; also he had been for years the New 
Oxford postmaster; so we lived on above and behind 
the shop, where Aunt Ildy and he had been brought 
up. Uncle Royle had been married, and his wife 
had died early. Perhaps “Miss Chism ” (her name 
sounded so like scissors with its snapping dentals, and 
she seemed so constitutionally given to cutting short 
whatever was most comfortably going on about her, 
that from the time I first got hold of an old mytho- 
logical chart and peopled my hungry fancy from it, I 
always associated her with Atropos) may partly have 
accounted to my mind for that. 

I, too, was born here ; for my mother came home, 
a widow, to have me, and to leave me as soon as I 
was “too big a girl ” to cry of nights, or to touch what 
I was told to let alone. 

So it began with prose for me, inevitably ; here in 
the most everyday part of an everyday inland town, 
neither country nor city, among people neither big nor 
little. 

I was thinking of the Edgells. Why could not 
things have been with me as wdth them ? They had 
each other, beside all the rest, and that was a romance 
in itself. I had nothing and no one. 

Margaret was pretty. When we played “Pretty 
Margaret,” at school, she was always the one to be 
first “ shut up in her tower ; ” that used to seem so 
grand and beautiful to me! And Julia, — what was 
it in her that so fascinated me ? I could not give it a 
name then; I think now it was a certain freshness, 
spring, and aplomb in her whole nature that made 
everything charming which she did, whether it were 
jumping the rope, reciting a lesson, climbing a tree, 
singing a song, or even ciphering upon a slate. 

I used to play with these girls in recess, and walk 


6 


HITHERTO. 


home with them after school. I used to “make be- 
lieve ” that I was their third sister, and that I only- 
had an errand in at “Miss Chism’s ” when we parted 
at our garden gates. I had to “pretend very hard” 
about many things. 

Everything seemed to fall in easily for the Edgells; 
for me, everything took a good deal of helping out. 
In the first place, they had green morocco shoes. I 
thought I could have been good and pretty in green 
morocco shoes ; but mine were always of common black 
calfskin. When they wore out and I begged for green 
ones, it was never worth while, or uncle wasn’t going 
to the city, and my toes were out, and I could n’t 
wait. “One of these days,” he said. Aunt Ildy 
“poh ”-ed, and told me not to take notions. 

Years before, when india-rubber shoes first came in 
use, I remember they had such nice ones, so prettily 
stamped on the toes, and run so evenly at the heels, 
and turning down so neatly and comfortably for the 
foot to slip in ! Uncle bought me a pair when I asked 
him; but they were unfinished, plain, unequal things, 
with a thick and a thin side; if I tried to turn them 
they twisted upside down. Nobody can guess the pain 
and the unsatisfaction and the disappointment I suf- 
fered over those india-rubber shoes. Why must things 
be always rough and awkward for me ? 

Then somebody gave the Edgells pretty basket- 
satchels. It was a pleasure to put one’s books and 
luncheon in them. Aunt Ildy said it was all nonsense; 
children didn’t have so many things in her day; and 
I carried my calico one, in which the books and bis- 
cuits all tumbled down together into the lowest corner. 
I suppose, in her day, if she had only thought of it, 
the calico satchel was the last new thing. Silly trifles 
these were, of course, such as only a child could fret 
about ; but the beauty of life is something to a child 


WHAT ANSTISS DOLE FARE REMEMBERS. 7 


also. It was in these things, then, that I longed for 
poetry and lived prose. 

The Edgells used to sit at their chamber window; 
this was cut low, with a broad sill, on a level with 
their laps; and here they dressed their dolls. I had 
no chamber of my own, to begin with. I slept with 
Aunt Ildy; for “where was the use of making up so 
many beds ? ” And our window-sills were up to my 
shoulders when I sat down, and only wide enough for 
a spool of cotton to stand on. I used to pull out a 
green trunk from under the bureau, and perch my 
chair on that and climb up, since I could not bring the 
window down ; and I would put my doll in the corner, 
and fold the shutter against her to hold her up, and 
sew my seam or hem my towel and make believe it 
was a gown for her. Yes, the Edgells had everything 
real and easy. I had to pretend hard, and make 
things do. 

Once, as if all were not enough, these girls had a 
cousin come to stay with them. I knew nothing of 
cousins, except in story-books. I had run off up the 
lane when the tea-things were put away, and met them 
at the head. I think Aunt Ildy winked in a grim 
way at this escape of mine in “blind-man’s holiday ” 
time, when she would not, by any means, have openly 
allowed it. This never occurred to me, however, 
when I might have taken my comfort in it. I was in 
my dark calico that I had worn all the week. One 
gown and two aprons, these were my seven days’ al- 
lowance; a change, and one for best; if I spilled or 
tore, I went to bed. The Edgells had on light French 
prints, — those pretty, old-fashioned, white-grounded 
ones, with little sprays and dots and flowers running 
all over them, that somehow gave one a pleasant, 
delicate taste in the mouth, or a sense of fragrance, 
to see; and they had their hair freshly brushed and 


8 


HITHERTO. 


fastened back with round springs bound with black 
velvet. 

“You take one corner, Jue, ” said Margaret, “and 
I ’ll take the other, and we ’ll watch which way the 
stage will come.” 

Jue ran up to Middle and Main, and Margaret 
down to Main and River. For me, I stood at the 
lane-head, pretending it was some of my business also, 
and that I was watching, — where no coach ever came. 
It was still and pleasant in the twilight, and there was 
nothing strange in our being out there so, bare-headed. 
People used to do differently then from now ; and ours 
was not a bustling town. We were all neighbors. 

The Copes, from South Side, went by in their open 
carriage. They nodded pleasantly to Julia and Mar- 
garet, and Allie Cope smiled at me. There had been 
a dancing- school at the hall the last winter, and Allie 
Cope used to dance with me sometimes. I had a 
drab-colored silk dress, — it had been Aunt Ildy’s 
once, — with swan’s-down round the neck and sleeves, 
which I wore then. It made me look dull and sallow, 
for there was no contrast. It was nearly the shade of 
my hair. My eyes were dark blue, and had dark 
lashes, notwithstanding my pale locks ; but for these I 
should have been an ugly child; as it was, I believed 
myself to be so, which answered every purpose. I 
never thought of its being partly the drab dress; if I 
had, it would have made no difference ; becomingness 
did not enter into Aunt Ildy’s articles of faith con- 
cerning dress. If a thing was good and tidy, it had 
to be becoming; handsome was that handsome did. 
Calicoes that were well covered, and would wash; silk 
that would wear and turn; above all, things that were 
“ in the house ; ” these were not to be superseded or 
disjmted. 

Margaret and Julia did not watch steadily at their 


WBAT ANSTISS BOLBEAUE REMEMBERS. 9 

corners; they skipped up and down the sidewalk, 
hack and forth to me ; and by and by the stage came 
rumbling across Main Street, when we were none of us 
looking for it. Then we all ran down the lane, the 
shorter way, for it was no use running after. The 
Edgells flew in at their garden gate, and it slammed 
back in my face. I lingered awhile in the faint hope 
that they and the cousin might come out ; but I heard 
the tinkle of china through the open window of the 
dining-parlor, and I knew they were giving her her 
tea; so I remembered that I had an errand in at Miss 
Chism’s. In fact, Lucretia called out to me from the 
kitchen door, — 

“Y’raunt ’s looking for ye, Anstiss! Be spry! ” 

I do not know which rasped roughest on my nerves. 
Aunt Ildy’s direct and summary orders, or Lucretia’ s 
citation of “Y’raunt.” 

Lucretia was a good soul, too. Indeed, I ought 
not to let this early life of mine, now that I have 
learned better of its meanings and of what came after, 
return upon my thought with only hard and sordid 
seeming, through calling up the worst of it. It was 
not hard and sordid. It was only plain and very dull 
for me, since I was a child full of all keen possibilities 
for doing and enjoying, and for missing, too. 

We were quiet, staid, respectable people; the Chisms 
had always been that in New Oxford, and we lived in 
a comfortable, old-fashioned, industrious way. Royle 
Chism — it had been Royal Chisholm once, three or 
four generations ago, and we were of good stock in the 
old land — was looked up to by his townspeople, and 
had responsibilities laid upon him. He had been sent 
year after year to the General Court; he had been 
postmaster through ups and downs of party ; his busi- 
ness of bookseller brought him into relation with all 
the best people, and kept him au fait to the thought 


10 


HITHERTO. 


and progress of the day. Over his counter, all ques- 
tions, political, religious, and local, were discussed ; it 
was this life, more than the money gain of it, that kept 
him to his trade. 

As to social position, that thing of interminable and 
inextricable shades in New England, we came in close 
after the professionals. We could claim civility, at 
least, from all; our modest living was as good and as 
dignified as most; everybody did not then drive their 
barouches, and wear their jewels, and set out their 
plate, and visit fifteen miles about ; there was still an 
old-school order to which such as we made no pretense, 
and against which we had no soreness. There were 
times and places when South Side and the town came 
together with a mutual courtesy ; in the intervals, each 
had its own fashions and its own proper and distinctive 
considerations. 

Solomon Edgell, our neighbor, was the leading law- 
yer of the place. He had gone as senator from our 
district to the General Court, when Uncle Royle was a 
representative. They were good friends. I played at 
school and in the lane, as I have said, with his daugh- 
ters. On rare and radiant afternoons I drank tea with 
them, and sat in the low window-seat and looked across 
in a sort of temporary triumph at an imaginary double 
of myself behind Aunt Ildy’s shutter. The Edgells, 
in their turn, were sent for sometimes to South Side, 
and drank tea vdth the Copes. 

Outside the town, all up and down the river, lay the 
beautiful farming region. Wagons drove into the 
streets and down to the water edge twice and thrice a 
w^eek, bringing country produce to the freight-boats 
that plied back and forth along this artery that took 
up and distributed the nourishment of a great country- 
side, of which a growing city, twenty-five miles away, 
was like the pulsing heart. 


WHAT ANSTISS DOLBEARE REMEMBERS. 11 


Every Saturday the wagon from Hathaway Farm 
came, and stopped on its way at our door. There was 
the weekly paper and perhaps a letter at the office, — 
these were to be inquired for; and there was our but- 
ter, which we always had of Mrs. Hathaway, and very 
likely some fruit or other kindly sending, — at least 
a message to Aunt Ildy. Mrs. Hathaway and she were 
old schoolmates and friends, in a one-sided sort of way, 
like sunshine and cliff. Kindly Mrs. Hathaway was 
content to do the shining; upon my aunt’s side there 
was grim constancy and reflective capability. It al- 
ways seems as if such persons did more in taking than 
the readier souls in giving. Possibly, measuring by 
strain of nature, it is counted so. Certainly, my aunt 
would accept kind offices from few. 

It is plain I could not write that novel if I would. 
I have gone wandering into all these things from just 
remembering how Lucretia called me in that night out 
of the lane. 

I saw the cousin afterward, many times. She came 
into my life as an influence. I know now what it was; 
she was picturesque. What I had seen a little of in 
Julia Edgell, I saw with tenfold largeness and lustre 
in her. Everything she wore had an effect; every- 
thing she did was in relief against the common back- 
ground of others’ unnoticed doings; things happened 
to her as nobody else need expect to have things hap- 
pen. She always made me feel as if she were living 
in a story. If I had had any dramatic knowledge 
then, I should have said to myself that she was always 
upon the stage. 

She was in mourning, to begin with; that, to my 
quick imagination, set her apart in a sanctity and dig- 
nity at once ; if she smiled or spoke,, it was as if she 
had condescended out of some holy gloom. The crape 
and the bombazine were a real majesty of sorrow, — a 


12 


HITHERTO. 


cloud into which no common experience could with- 
draw. The black merino shawl she loved to wear, 
contrasting about her white neck and beneath her 
rounded and imprinted chin, and falling in soft lines 
over her figure ; the long veil that made her face so 
fair and sweet, — these were, to my child’s fancy, the 
very poetry of bereavement ; there seemed such a gran- 
deur and solemn distinction in having lost a friend. 
She so young, too. When old women wore black 
shawls and bonnets, there seemed nothing in that ; 
plenty such came into meeting; there was probably 
nothing else left, and it was not worth while that they 
should buy anything new. The first Sunday after 
Augusta Hare came, my open-worked straw bonnet, 
with the blue gauze ribbon (I hated gauze, it curled 
up so at the ends; it couldn’t float, even if there had 
ever been enough of it), seemed so tawdry and un- 
meaning, — so little-girlish, — when I put it on ! I 
had a secret wish in my heart that I was grown up, — 
not very old, — and that I had somebody belonging 
to me for whom it would be time to die. I thought 
of no one in particular. I do not think there was any 
wickedness in my wish. I thought only of the sub- 
limity of death; of the greatness of having had it 
come near one. 

It was Augusta Hare’s father who had died; the 
pity of it I could not comprehend, only the poetic 
pathos, never having known what daughterhood truly 
was. I supposed it had been quite time, and it seemed 
to me no ill for him, but a crowning ; he became kingly 
to my thought, and a question about him trembled for 
weeks within me, and passed with a thrill from my 
lips at last, when she herself said something which 
drew it forth. All things came to me in this wise, 
with a depth and a passion, according to their kind. 
Only my own life seemed so poor, — a mere living on, 


WHAT ANSTISS BOLBEABE BEMEMBEBS. 13 


with no quick stirrings. It was bad for me; I should 
make all kinds of false estimates and mistakes; what 
I ought to have had was the beauty of childhood; the 
harm was in my being “too big a girl.” 

It was Augusta’s father; and she had money of her 
own which he had left her ; this made her so important 
and so talked about ; houses and stores belonged to 

her, away in H , where Mr. Edgell, being her 

guardian, had to go and transact business for her. She 
was to stay a little while here, and then go away to 
a boarding-school: another of the grand possibilities, 
which would never, I supposed, be possible to me. 

Besides all this, she told Margaret and Julia, in the 
deepest confidence, that she was engaged. As soon as 
she had done school she would be married. If I had 
venerated her before, there is no verb to express what 
I did then. Grown-up people, particularly men who 
make the dictionaries, have no need, perhaps no rec- 
ollection of a need, for such an utterance. Whether 
in the truest things or the most fantastic, there is 
nothing like the intensity of a child. Straight to 
the vital essence its imagination and its insight go; 
stopped by no contradictions, no practicalities. 

I am remembering a foolishness ; but I believed in 
something grand. I cannot help being reminded, even 
by a foolishness, of what the Master said concerning 
this seizing of greatness and glory, and how far might 
be its reach. “They only do always behold the very 
face,” — even of “your Father which is in heaven.” 

In the midst of all this, I left off hemming towels, 
and with weariness and tears was learning to darn 
stockings. 

I had two comforts over this work, grinding and 
distasteful as it was ; one was to get down with it some- 
times into Lucretia’s room, in those clean, restful 
hours between the eating of dinner and the getting of 


14 


HITHERTO. 


tea ; when the cat, and the tea-kettle, and the few flies 
that escaped Aunt Ildy’s and Lucretia’s vigilance and 
resisted their traps, had the kitchen to themselves, and 
Aunt Ildy had stepped out, or was taking a nap, or 
gone to a sewing circle, or preparatory meeting, and 
Lucretia would let me in, and, perhaps, tell me a 
story. 

Her room was off the kitchen, and down, by two 
steps ; these, clean and glossy with old-fashioned 
thick, dark* yellow paint and almost daily soapsuds ; 
from a little child I remember them, worn into hol- 
lows along the edges and knobby around the nail- 
heads. Sometimes I had used to “keep store ” there, 
kneeling on the floor and setting out my goods upon 
them; selling things to Lucretia as she came to want 
them in her work; pepper-box, and salt-cellar, and 
nutmeg-grater, knife, spoon, and dipper. This was 
when she was not hurried, of course, and when she 
happened to be very good-natured; and she used to 
pay me with spotted beans. Afterward these were 
my counters in “ Hull Gull ; ” I doing all the han- 
dling and counting, shutting my eyes and picking up 
hap -hazard, when it was my turn to guess how many, 
and keeping conscientiously the two piles, Lucretia’s 
and my own, of which hers went when the game was 
over into the bean-box again, and mine into a little 
bag to “make change ” in my next shop-keeping. 

An old-fashioned chest of drawers, very much per- 
fumed with musk and apples; a bedstead, glorious 
with a patchwork quilt in a sort of Hail-Columbia 
star pattern on a dark-blue ground, of which every bit 
was the text of some reminiscent narrative; a great 
oval, braided woolen mat which carpeted the middle 
of the painted floor ; and a low, broad window, open- 
ing into the back garden, with morning-glories and 
scarlet beans growing to its top in summer, close by 


WHAT ANSTISS DOLE FARE REMEMBERS. 15 


whose pleasantness stood a black and yellow wooden 
rocking-chair, with cushions upon the seat and across 
the head-piece covered with remarkable figured patch, 
upon which a summer-house and a red-tailed rooster, 
the one as big as the other, alternated, — these made 
up the external furnishings and charms of Lucretia’s 
room. About these clung the perception of a kind of 
life peculiar to itself; not the high and picturesque, of 
which I had vague dreams and glimpses elsewhere and 
in other moods, hut the plain and cosy, contented, 
commonplace, and comfortable. Among them were 
suggestions of “ away down East, ” where this life had 
begun, almost in the very wilds ; of up-country frol- 
ics, huskings and quiltings, sleigh-rides and singing- 
schools; of camp-meetings and “hirings out,” when 
Lucretia, like other girls of her circle, had entered 
for a winter or a summer into some neighbor house- 
hold, making one with it, and “helping round ; ” learn- 
ing its life and plans and interests from an interior 
view; being behind the scenes at a “weddin’,” or a 
funeral perhaps ; knowing all about how the match and 
the cake were made, or the “particklers ” of the ill- 
ness and the final frame of mind, — all this I heard in 
scraps from Lucretia, and idealized, in one way, as I 
did Helen Mar’s adventures, or the contemporary life 
of the Edgells, in another. It was not all misfortune, 
my being imaginative ; I got a great deal out of it. 

My other comfort was in an accomplishment I had 
acquired with infinite pains, and could only exercise 
by stealth; that of reading and darning at the same 
time, seizing two or three lines while I drew out my 
long thread, digesting and enjoying them while I 
inned and outed the next woof -line with my needle. 
In this fashion I embroidered banners, in fancy, with 
Helen in her Scottish castle. I trembled at her perils 
in the hands of Soulis or De Valence; I knelt in the 


16 


HITHERTO. 


chapel beside Sir William Wallace, and I watched the 
triumphal entry into Sterling from the walls of Snaw- 
doun. I had this, and the six volumes of Santo Se- 
hastiano, and the seven of Sir Charles Grandison. 
Mrs. Hathaway lent me these last, one at a time. 
After all, I was not thoroughly unhappy. One might 
live through deeper basketfuls of darns than mine in 
company like theirs. 

Aunt Ildy and Lucretia were immersed, one day, 
in the anxieties of preserving; all the afternoon they 
were busy pasting papers over jars and tumblers, and 
setting in final array their ruby and amber pride on 
the long shelves of the great store-room. I was safe 
upstairs with my books and my long needle and my 
mending cotton; it was only to work an hour more, 
at most, and I did not care for the lane, to-day. 
Lady Selina had just torn her dress in the library door 
at which she had been listening, and Lord Delamore 
was recommending her to have it “fine-drawn;” that 
was a pretty word for tedious doings. I called my 
darnings to myself by that new name, and went on 
pricking up the balls of my fingers contentedly; as 
eager meanwhile as if I had not read it a dozen times 
before, to see how all should come out straight, the 
fine-drawing of deceit be demolished, and Julia’s in- 
tegrity trimnphantly made manifest. 

All at once, from the garden door, a light step 
came up the stairs and around to my room. I had 
been too absorbed to notice from the window that any 
one had entered. 

How lovely she was, as I turned and saw her then, 
in her clear, black muslin with tiniest dashes of white, 
and a knot of black ribbon in her hair ! In her hand, 
streaming down in brilliant contrast over her dress, 
was a rich, broad bonnet-scarf of blue, fringed at the 
ends, as I had seen the Edgells’ last Sunday. Theirs 


WHAT ANSTISS DOLE BARE REMEMBERS. 17 


were violet, and green; the gifts, and the suggestion 
of the new style, had been from Cousin Augusta. It 
was a simple, graceful fashion that had just come up, 
infinitely taking to my fanciful eye, of replacing all the 
perks and pinks and bows of flimsy gauze, and the taw- 
dry flowers, such as had been worn, with a single band 
of wide lutestring passed up from under the chin across 
the bonnet in the depression between front and crown, 
and tied at one side in a careless knot or loop, with 
long ends fluttering down upon the shoulder. Next to 
a veil, it was the loveliest head-gear I had ever seen. 

“I have brought this over for you, dear,” said 
Cousin Augusta; and then the sky fell down. 

Something seemed to make the beautiful thing she 
held out to me oscillate before my vision from side to 
side, like the leaping reflection of light from a moving 
mirror. I fairly put my hands up to rub my eyes. 

“Get your bonnet, Nansie; let ’s try it on.” 

She took it for granted I should dare. She took 
upon herself, perhaps purposely, the responsibility of 
act and instigation. Otherwise, how should I have 
laid a sacrilegious finger on that Sunday finery of 
mine, which, once put together under Aunt Ildy’s 
order and supervision, became that inviolable thing 
the “new” and “best;” which should continue such 
through whatever gradual fading, and crushing, and 
fraying, till the same august authority should ordain a 
substitution. 

Nothing but bits of curled and shabby ribbons, de- 
faced, unmeaning flowers, and scraps of flabby lace 
they were which Augusta Hare removed so unconcern- 
edly, and laid into a little worthless heap; but I trem- 
bled at every stitch she snipped, and every pin she 
drew, as if she were laying violent hands on the pillars 
of some sublime institution. I caught my breath, 
while she chatted easily and pleasantly. 


18 


HITHERTO. 


What made her take this notice of me, and show me 
this kindness ? She knew how I worshiped her ; and 
she liked to be worshiped. She knew I had been 
drawn, atom as I was, into her irresistible sphere, and 
had become a little satellite. The tremendous force 
of gravitation is a mutual thing; the great sun himself 
cannot but lean a little, in his turn, toward the small- 
est orb that wheels about him. Otherwise, there was 
nothing in me that could have won a thought of hers, 
far less her love. 

The open straw was lined with white ; she put some 
of the freshest of the little blue flowers, picked out 
and arranged as only her fingers could do it, about the 
face, and then she set it on my head, bending it deftly, 
tied it by the little inside strings, and passed the rus- 
tling elegance about it, knotting it at the side with one 
upstanding loop, and drawing the full ends out hand- 
somely, all of which made a great rushing sound about 
my ears while her hands were busy at it, and sent a 
quiver all over me of mingled ecstasy and apprehen- 
sion. What would Aunt Ildy say? But, oh! was it 
not beautiful when she led me to the glass to look? 

“Now do it yourself, and let me see. Not too long 
a bow ; there, just that ; the shortest end forward and 
uppermost, — so; it ’s just as pretty as it can be, and 
it covers all the pin-places. Why, the bonnet looks 
quite new! ” 

Oh, dear me, if Aunt Ildy had heard that ! When 
it was my “new ” bonnet, — bought and trimmed three 
months ago! 

I don’t suppose it entered Augusta Hare’s head that 
she had done an impertinent thing, she was so used to 
choosing and changing for herself, and the Edgells 
thought nothing of taking the like little fancies and 
liberties with their dress. It was only I who dared 
not say that my bonnet was my own. I dared not 


WHAT ANSTISS BOLBEARE REMEMBERS. 19 


even confess to Augusta Hare that it was not. I could 
only kiss her and thank her for her gift, and stam- 
meringly “hope that Aunt Ildy ” — “Oh! Miss 
Chism will be sure to like it,” she interrupted, where 
I could not have finished. “It ’s all the fashion, 
and plain, too ; nothing dashy about it ; just the thing 
to wear with your white, ruffled, dimity coat.” 

And, kissing me again, she went downstairs. 

I put all the scraps, which were fit only to have 
gone straight to the rag-bag, reverently into the bot- 
tom of the bandbox, and shut the bonnet in with them, 
the bright scarf tied across it as it should be worn ; for 
I liked to leave it so, and there was the vague thought 
of Aunt Ildy, who must come to see it sooner or later, 
and to whom otherwise it would have simply seemed a 
denuded and annihilated thing, since she could never 
have taken in the unexpressed idea; and I went back 
to my darning, — rich, and glad, and frightened to 
death. 

I suppose if I had been six or eight years older, and 
had gone and got privately married, I could not have 
come back into Miss Chism’s presence with a more 
awful consciousness upon me than I bore that night. I 
cowered guiltily within myself when Uncle Royle spoke 
kindly to me, and felt a condemned traitor as Aunt 
Ildy helped me to butter. Confession was struggling 
to my lips ; I longed to ease my mind ; but I waited, 
turning over phrases that should not quite choke me ; 
nay, that should seem innocently fearless, taking it for 
granted that the thing should be approved. 

“Oh, Aunty! ” I began desperately, once, as she 
had her head in the cupboard, putting by the cake, 
“ Miss Augusta Hare has given ” — 

“ The cheese, Anstiss, ” said Aunt Ildy, with neither 
interest nor attention diverted by my words from what 
she was about. “And the quince. Quick! ” 


20 


HITHERTO. 


I handed her from the tea-table what she called for, 
and she closed and buttoned the cupboard ; closed and 
buttoned my lips also; for how could that sudden re- 
membrance occur to me in like manner again? 

She kept me busy with the dishes, and running to 
and fro; then she got out the cribbage-board, and she 
and Uncle Royle began their unfailing game. I had 
some knitting and worked tremulously at that. 

Once more, a little later, as they gathered up their 
cards after a hand, I did essay : — 

“ Oh, Aunty ! I was going to tell you ” — 

“ Fifteen two, fifteen four, a pair is six ; six, seven, 
eight and six, seven, eight is twelve, and his nob — 
thirteen ! ” counted Uncle Royle, and put me out 
again. 


CHAPTER II. 


PUNISHMENT. 

I WAS putting away the last of the pink-edged cups 
and plates in the high oak dresser the next morning 
after breakfast, when I heard Aunt Ildy go down the 
half flight of stairs which led to the street door, and 
Richard Hathaway’s cheery voice greeting her below. 

“I ’ve driven mother down this morning, you see. 
Miss Chism. She ’s got shopping to do in the town, 
and — well, you ’d best step out, if you ’ll be so good, 
and she ’ll tell you her plans herself.” 

I came as far as the jog in the passage, and caught 
a glimpse of Mrs. Hathaway’s kindly and comely face 
leaning forth from behind the canvas side of the cov- 
ered wagon, where she sat holding the reins while her 
son should bring in box and basket. 

“Yes, Ildy,” she was saying, “it ’s a proper pleas- 
ant day, and there wasn’t much of a load to go or 
come, so we took the wagon, Richard and I ; and what 
I want is that when we get along back, — three 
o’clock, say, — you an’ Anstiss ’ll have your things on 
to go out with us to the farm and spend Sunday. 
Lucreshy ’ll take care of Royle for once, I guess, — 
I don’t suppose there ’s any use of asking him, — and 
the rowen ’s bein’ cut, and the fields are as sweet as 
June. It ’ll do you good; especially the child.” 

I wished she had not said that last word; not that 
Aunt Ildy really would grudge me a good; but she 
would feel I had no business to be put first, or “spe- 
cially.” 

“Oh, I don’t exactly know how,” she began, in re- 


22 


HITHEBTO. 


ply. “Saturday’s a poor day to drop things just 
where they are. I ain’t ever much given to jaunting, 
you know. I guess you ’d better come back here and 
take an early tea, and ride home in the edge of the 
evening. We ’ll come out some other time, — a week- 
day, maybe.” 

“No such a thing, Ildy Chism. Some other time 
isn’t any time at all. It won’t be you if your house 
isn’t Sunday-straight by two o’clock, and I shall just 
carry out my own calculation, or not come hack here 
at all, — unless, indeed, you ’ll let Anstiss go with- 
out you.” 

“That wouldn’t do. There ’d he nothing of her 
to come hack a-Monday. She ’d leave a piece on 
every hush on the farm. If you ’re so set, — well, 
I ’ll see about it.” 

This was New-English for full consent; for thanks 
and all, with Aunt Ildy. So I knew we should go ; 
and I had great ado to hold myself quiet, and wait 
for proper notice of her intention from Aunt Ildy her- 
self, after she should have “seen about it.” I did not 
think, though, she need have made me out quite such 
a romp. I was ashamed to have Richard Hathaway 
stand there and hear her speak so of me. 

He came in just then, with the nice, fresh -smelling 
box of new-made butter, and the basket of hardly less 
fragrant eggs, warm and spotless right out of the hay. 
He always brought them in himself, though Lucretia 
often met him at the door, and would have taken 
them. He always had a pleasant word for me, too, 
though Richard Hathaway was never given to much 
talking. 

“Are you glad, Nansie? ” He saw by my face, I 
am sure, that I had heard. 

“I shall be when it ’s time,” I answered demurely. 
I had never heard of such things then, but I knew 


PUNISHMENT. 


23 


practically well enough the difference between infor- 
mal information and official announcements. In Aunt 
Ildy’s regime nothing was, until she declared it to he. 

Richard looked in my eyes and laughed. I knew 
why ; I felt them dancing in my head ; and there had 
been a tilt in my voice that I tried to make so calm. 

“The old Cropple-crown has got fourteen chickens.” 

There was no use in trying then; I laughed out, all 
my delight bubbling over together with this last drop. 
Aunt Ildy came in and found me so. She thought 
Richard had told me. She said nothing till Richard 
had gone, and then only sharply : — 

“You needn’t be too sure. I haven’t decided 
yet. It will depend.” 

I understood that. Oh, if I only could please her 
all the morning, and seem not to be too happy about 
anything particular ! I tried to move round as usual, 
and not to dance or sing. I did not ask her a single 
question, but waited patiently. I hit my lips when 
ecstatic thoughts came suddenly, and checked myself 
on the very verge of glad “ifs.” 

For three hours I truly believe I never once remem- 
bered my bonnet. When I did think of it, there was 
no chance for anything like casual mention. I should 
have had to follow her pertinaciously into a closet, or 
waylay her in full career, and make it a regular con- 
fession. I did not see why I need put myself at that 
disadvantage. 

Oh, Aunt Ildy ! with everybody else I was a frank 
child; with yourself, you tempted me to he old and 
wary. This was the greatest harm you did me. 

I was to wear my gingham cape-bonnet to ride over 
and run about the farm in, of course ; Aunt Ildy would 
never “hear to ” my “flacketting round ” in my best 
things on any hut best occasions. My little bandbox 
held, as well as my bonnet, my white dimity coat 


24 


HITHERTO. 


pinned up in a large old towel. Aunt Ildy gave it to 
me to put in, and left the box itself in my charge, 
telling me not to carry it upside down. My heart 
fluttered up and hack again between its proper place 
and my throat, as she did so. I stood beside the bed 
with my back turned to her, and when the choke went 
down a little, began again : — 

“Aunt Ildy! Just see ” — But here I heard her 
voice suddenly calling to Lucretia from the farther 
stair-head. She was everywhere at once this busy day. 

So dinner came, and three o’clock, and the Hatha- 
ways ; and Richard helped Aunt Ildy in upon the back 
seat with his mother, and lifted me up in front to sit 
with him. Aunt Ildy’s bandbox, containing her Sun- 
day bonnet and best cap, — she, too, religiously re- 
served her best and wore her green calash, — was made 
room for under the seat, and she took her double-cov- 
ered basket in which were our night-clothes in her lap. 
Richard put my little box between his feet, “ so that, ” 
he whispered, “I might drive, by and by;” and we 
were off up the long River Street, and out among the 
meadows. 

The farm was four miles away, just on the edge of 
Broadfields; within a mile or so of Broadfields meet- 
ing-house, where we should go to-morrow. 

Our ride that afternoon is one of the things that 
come up most vividly in my recollection of old days. 
Its hope and delight and dread were so intense, by 
turns; its beguiling of beauty and present content 
were so full, at times, and so forgetful of the rest. 

We used to have “rides” then; they were a great 
deal better things than “drives” are nowadays. I 
cannot more than half fall in with the new-fashioned 
precision, and I am inclined somewhat to dispute its 
being so precise after all. It leaves some inconvenient 
open questions and ambiguities. For instance, do you 


PUNISHMENT. 


25 


drive, or ride, or what then, in a stage-coach or a 
horse-car? And what is the difference when one ac- 
tually holds the reins? You drive yourself, or some- 
body else, do you? Very well, what do you do with 
the horse? 

I rode that day sitting by Richard’s side, he man- 
aging the great brown bay; I drove when he gave it 
up to me for a safe, level space, and a few watchful 
minutes on his part ; the driving was dignified and ex- 
citing; the riding was passive, dreamy, haunted with 
imaginations, freshened with new thoughts that came 
in, manifold, by the wayside. 

It was early in September, and the white and pur- 
ple asters were beginning to smile and nod by the 
fences; the sweet-briers were perfecting their scarlet 
ovals; and the fragrance of ripening fruits and late 
hay-crops came up under the harvest sun. Flocks of 
turkeys were roaming the stubble of early grain-fields ; 
there were heaps of corn, waiting for the husking, al- 
ready gathered into some of the great, open barns; 
some of the stirring housewives had got out goodly 
strings of apples to dry against the clapboards; one 
began, in the midst of the warmth and perfume of 
summer, to get a flavor of the coming cheer and plenty 
and snugness of a New England winter. It is with 
this meeting of ripeness and beauty, this focal point 
of joy where labor and reward, growth and rest, salute 
each other and their mingled breath is on the air, that 
autumn recompenses for the harsh doubts and strifes, 
the uncertain advance and retard, the delays and 
chills and disappointments, of that opposite pole of the 
year, our American spring. Every sense brings back 
to me at this moment what every sense enjoyed that 
day, so long ago. And I can look back now and take 
the good of it, which was the life of it, while the 
pain, which was a passing thing, is done with. 


26 


HITHERTO. 


The pain came up when we saw Broadfields spire 
between the hills. I must tell her to-night; I ought 
to have told her long before. I had, in a manner, ob- 
tained a pleasure under false pretenses, coming out 
here with her, bringing undeclared iniquity in my in- 
nocent-looking bandbox, before her very eyes. I knew 
what she would think and say, but I began to feel that 
it must be to-night, at all hazards ; it would be too au- 
dacious to put the bonnet on to-morrow. I am sure I 
looked pale and wild when Richard Hathaway lifted me 
down over the wheel, and gave the box into my hand. 

I followed Aunt Ildy up into the best bedroom, 
trembling. I remember I stood and looked at the 
little balls on the white curtain fringes, moved lightly 
in the gentle air that came in at the opened windows, 
as one looks at little senseless things like these, when 
one is about to suffer a great pain or danger. 

Aunt Ildy was pinning on her cap at the glass. 
There was something brave and honest, after all, in 
my telling it then; for my visit had not fairly begun; 
there were dreadful things in her power; besides, I 
had truly tried before. 

“Aunt Ildy, Miss Augusta Hare made me a pres- 
ent, yesterday, of a scarf for my bonnet, and showed 
me how to put it on. It is just like those she gave 
the Edgells, only theirs are purple and green. Mine 
is blue.” 

I don’t know how I said it all. Something came 
up in me with my honest, though tardy effort, of a 
sustaining consciousness that I had a right to put it so, 

— as a simple matter in which I looked for no blame, 

— and to claim, of course, her interest and apprecia- 
tion for the gift. While I spoke, I opened the band- 
box and took the bonnet out. I adjusted the bow, 
and smoothed the floating ends. I held it forth — in 
a dead silence. 


PUNISHMENT. 


27 


I think Aunt Ildy was fairly at a loss for words. I 
had never done anything like this before. Now it 
was a greatness thrust upon me. It was like a Decla- 
ration of Independence. I don’t know how John Han- 
cock and the rest felt when they had done it. I only 
know my teeth would have chattered if I had not held 
them forcibly apart, and that all my breath was gone. 

Her great gray eyes looked at me in a way they 
had, as if the very Day of Judgment were coming 
down out of them. I waited, trying not to let the in- 
ward tremble become a visible shake, or the Day of 
Judgment know I saw it. 

“You — little — artful — hypocrite! ” came at last 
with the most awful and bitter deliberation. “You 
think you have got here, do you? And your bonnet 
with you? And that I can’t help it? Lay that thing 
down. Open that basket. Take out your night- 
gown. Now undress yourself and go to bed.” 

She said it all slowly, and in a monotone, her fin- 
ger on the unfastened side of her cap, and then turned 
round to the glass again, and put in the last pin. 

I laid the thing down, — the beautiful thing that 
might have given me so much pleasure. I opened the 
basket, and took out my nightgown, — a plain little 
garment with straight sleeves and ungarnished neck- 
band, made last winter of brown cotton, and partly 
bleached by wearing and washing to a fitness for sum- 
mer use. And then I turned and faced Aunt Ildy in 
the glass, while I reached up over my shoulders to un- 
fasten my frock. 

“Don’t say I was artful. Aunt Ildy. I wanted 
you to know, and I tried to tell you, but I couldn’t 
get a chance.” 

Chance 

The contempt, the utter discredit, the putting to 
shame and absurdity of such a plea, the flinging back 


28 


HITHERTO, 


my truth into my face as a lie, — all these, inflected 
in that one word, could neither be spelled nor punc- 
tuated. 

My cheeks, my ears, tingled with anger. I heard 
little electric snaps in my head, and they seemed to go 
out at my eyes. If I had been six years old, instead 
of twelve, I should have stamped and slapped at her. 
I hated her at that minute, as only a child, outraged 
and exasperated, can hate. I relieved myself with a 
venomous impertinence. 

“You take up people’s words, Miss Chism. That 
is very ill-mannered ! ” ' 

Then she came to me and shook me ; shook me and 
glared at me, and at last pushed me roughly toward 
the bed. I let myself fall upon it, and shut my eyes 
and tried to faint away. I often tried and longed for 
this; tried and longed when my blood was boiling, 
and wondered that I could not bring it to pass. 

Aunt Ildy looked at me as one who had done her 
duty, and who left me to my tantrums and my con- 
science. I believe she truly felt that she did her duty 
by me, and that it was she upon whom it fell hard. 
She kept on doing it. I will do her the justice to say 
she never flinched. Whatever praise belongs to her 
for that, let me award it. 

She left me and went downstairs. As soon as she 
had gone, I put off fainting, and got up and bolted the 
door. I knew I should not dare to leave it so; but 
there was a temporary relief in pretending to myself 
that I had shut her out. 

I was only a child, and not a vindictive one. 
Children’s intense passions are mercifully short-lived; 
by the time I had taken off my stockings, I had be- 
gun to cool. By the time I got my nightgown on, I 
began to feel I had been in fault. That was the sting 
always; I was never persecuted wholly for idghteous- 


PUNISHMENT. 


29 

ness* sake; I knew I was persecuted, and I could wish 
it might have been for once as a pure martyr. Then I 
could have known a kind of glorious joy in my resent- 
ment; a thrill of sweetness in my grief. This was a 
piece of my prose ; I knew, after all, that I was only 
a commonplace, naughty girl, and I could never faint 
away. 

In my thought of myself I was true, — even un- 
sparing. I confessed to myself that I had not been 
blameless. Tears came down my hot cheek, and I 
was sorry. I undrew the bolt and crept into bed, and 
made up my mind that I would say so to Aunt Ildy. 
I always did say so in the end; I said it so often, 
alas ! that she came not to care for it, or believe it. 
“ I should like to see something of it, ” she would say. 
I meant she should see something of it ; perhaps if she 
had been anybody else, she would have done so. I was 
as truly penitent as I had been wicked, only these 
states alternated so swiftly and unexpectedly with each 
other. “There was no consistence in it,” Aunt Ildy 
said. 

The bed was pleasant, after all ; it was better than 
it would have been to go down there. I was exhausted, 
and my good time there was spoiled at any rate. I 
could lie here and watch the afternoon away in peace. 
I was at peace; with a child, to be sorry is to he at 
once inwardly forgiven. I only wondered, now and 
then, with a little tremor of mortification, what Rich- 
ard and Mrs. Hathaway would think. 

The bed stood right across a western window, and 
this looked down into an orchard. I could smell ripe 
apples, and hear faint clucks and chirps of feathered 
families picking up meat suppers of bugs and worms. 
The wide sky would he all golden and purple and red, 
by and by, as the sun went down, and the moon and 
the little stars would be out above the hills. I heard 


30 


HITHERTO. 


the great wagons creaking up to the barn, and the hay- 
sweetness was shaken out into all the air, as the men 
tossed it up with their forks into the windows. 

As the sun slanted round, ceasing to fall full across 
me, I put out my hand and softly pushed back the 
green blind, and then I could see into the tree-tops 
in which lived little birds ; off where white clouds lay 
low along the heaven, waiting to put on their glory; 
away to green hillsides and far-off grazing cows and 
sheep. 

Well, I was here, as Aunt Ildy said; and she could 
not help that. Not until Monday morning. Now and 
then I thought I heard her coming, and would pull 
back the blind again. I must not let her know that I 
could escape so into all this beauty and delight. She 
must believe me to be quite miserable, or her duty 
would not he done. Was this deceitfulness of nature, 
or only the instinct of self-defense ? 

The keeping-room was on the east side of the house 
downstairs. Behind it were the little tea - parlor, 
Mrs. Hathaway’s room, and the kitchen. I and the 
sunset would he quite by ourselves. This was good. 

As I lay thinking how good, something came flying 
in suddenly through my open window and fell upon my 
bed. Not a bird. A great, red-brown, odorous pear. 
Another shot followed. This was a peach as big as 
my two hands could hold; amber-colored on one side, 
crimson on the other; a little mist of dust-colored 
down like a veil over the whole. I knew the wind did 
not blow them in. I knew in a minute that good, kind 
Richard Hathaway was there, and that he did not de- 
spise, hut pitied me, in my fault and my imprisonment. 
I heard a step crunching the short-cut grass-stems as 
he walked away. 

In a few minutes came a gentle “Biddy! Biddy! ” 
with the steps again, and a fluttering and clucking and 


PUNISHMENT. 


31 


chirping that drew nearer and nearer. I sat up, pulled 
the blind to screen myself, and looked through it from 
behind the back edge of the curtain. I saw the old 
Cropple-crown, and I counted her fourteen chickens. 
I saw Richard, too, who had lured them patiently 
down under my window, standing back under the house 
wall, never once looking up, throwing meal- dough from 
a tin pan among them. 

“ Oh, the cunning things ! ” I cried, quite off my 
guard; and I saw Richard Hathaway smile, but still 
he never looked up. 

I don’t know; but sometimes I think now, when I 
recollect of him things like these, that they came some- 
how nearer to poetry and chivalry, — small, common 
things though they were, — through their kindly mean- 
ing, and the delicate, thoughtful way in which he man- 
aged them, than I dreamed of at the time or for long 
after. Chivalry is not all in riding tilts, or storming 
towers, or wearing ladies’ gloves ; nor even in sending 
bouquets to front doors, or singing serenades under 
windows, as the young men of New Oxford had been 
taken with doing in an epidemic sort of way, ever since 
Augusta Hare had been staying at the Edgells’. 

Aunt Ildy came up in rigid, stony, systematic dis- 
pleasure, which was a part of her discipline and fulfill- 
ment of duty to me-ward, and brought me a plate of 
bread and butter, and a glass of water, at six o’clock. 
She set it down upon a chair beside the bed without a 
word. Even the wicked must not starve, bodily. 
There is a sixth commandment against that. But for 
a kind, forgiving word, a look of tender mercy uncon- 
strained, a glance that questions hopefully if better 
things may yet have begun to be ; it is well that the 
child-spirit should be put on diet, should long and 
faint, and feel punished and cast out, till it lose its 
appetite even, and cease to care, and fall into a moral 


32 


HITHEBTO. 


atrophy. Well for the world that God knew better, 
and sent down his Son ! 

I think back and look upon my then self in a strange 
kind of pity, when I remember how I repented toward 
this icy unrelenting, and shed warm tears against this 
face of rock. 

“Aunt Ildy! Please forgive me. I am sorry I 
spoke to you so.” Aunt Ildy’s hand was on the cover 
of the bandbox in which she had thrust the offending 
bonnet out of sight. 

“Oh, yes; you’re always sorry. Where’s the 
pieces ? ” 

“Down at the bottom. Won’t you. Aunt Ildy? 
Mayn’t I begin again? ” 

“I ’ve no doubt you will begin again, the first chance 
you get.” 

She knew well enough what I meant ; yet this was 
all the answer she could give me, wresting my words 
to a bitter sneer ; and so she took the bonnet, gathered 
up the remnants of its past identity, and walked away 
downstairs. 

I always longed so to “begin again;” to rub out 
the old mistake and misery, to prevail on the hard eyes 
to shut themselves against the past, and to watch for 
and remember only the new and better future that I 
meant should be. Only One does that for us ; He who 
“blots out our iniquities and covers our sins.” 

I used sometimes, involuntarily, to plead so, when 
I failed suddenly in a lesson at school that I thought 
I knew. I used so to entreat Lucretia, when I had 
been mischievous in the kitchen, and she threatened to 
turn me out and send me off upstairs. “Oh, let me 
stay and begin again ! ” It is the everlasting beseech- 
ing out of the pain and shame and the slow struggle 
of humanity. 

Did Aunt Ildy never need to cry out in like manner 


PUNISHMENT. 


33 


herself for any failure in her life ? I do not know. It 
seemed to me a peculiarity in her constitution that, 
having once set out and determined to be rigidly right- 
eous, the possibility of her ever, by any slip, or self- 
delusion, or infirmity, finding herself at fault, after 
all, like common un exacting mortals, never even faintly 
occurred to her from that time forth ; as if having once 
waked up early in the morning, no getting behindhand 
afterward, through loss or waste of the plentiful min- 
utes, could take away that primal fact, or change the 
value of her day. 

Well, I could never begin again, except in one 
thing, — that was my garter knitting. If I dropjDed 
a stitch and made a hole in that, I could ravel out, 
and wind up, and cast new stitches, and go on until 
my fingers made another blunder. ‘^That was all it 
amounted to, ” Aunt Ildy said. When she dropped a 
stitch she knitted it right in again. Sometimes it 
got turned and twisted in the picking up, but that did 
not matter. Nobody could find a hole in her work, 
and she never raveled out. 

I ate my bread and butter. I had my pear and my 
peach for sauce; and presently something more came 
through the window; one at a time, two long, brown, 
spicy, twisted doughnuts. Mrs. Hathaway made 
them in rings and balls, as well as twists ; but Richard 
remembered that I liked twists best. It was better 
fun than Aunt Ildy knew; and since she would not let 
me be sorry and begin again, I put that off, and took 
such unsanctified comfort as I could get. 

I got up early the next morning, without forbid- 
dance. In truth, I had been restless from before day- 
light. One cannot begin at four in the afternoon and 
lie still much beyond the same hour in the morning; 
and Aunt Ildy wanted, no doubt, a last nap undis- 
turbed. So I dressed and went downstairs. 


34 


HITHERTO. 


The best room door was partly open as I went by, 
and I peeped in. There was an old-fashioned, round- 
framed, convex mirror over the chimney, in which you 
saw yourself diminished and far-off. This was a great 
wonder and delight to me. I Ventured in to take a 
little prance before it. But I was stopped, aghast, at 
what I saw upon the table beneath tlie window. My 
bonnet, re — what shall I say ! — resurrected ; dug up 
again, as it were, very much the worse, as to its old 
form and idea, for having been buried. There are 
two things that not all the king’s horses nor all the 
king’s men can ever do in this world, — set Humpty 
Dumpty up again, or recombine an old garnishing of 
bits and ends that have faded here, and crumpled 
there, and come to a certain unity of shabbiness, into 
anything like unity again. The last state of that bon- 
net is worse than the first. To this last state had 
Aunt Ildy’s remorseless, retributive fingers brought 
the remains of mine. I could have cried; but it was 
funny. It looked like an old bird that had had a 
fight; or like an excited porcupine with two flabby 
tails. It bristled and it draggled at once. I won- 
dered if she would actually make me wear it. While 
I stood there, Richard walked along the hall, and saw 
me and came in. 

“Just look! ” I said; and then I made a little un- 
expected sort of sound, a “boo-higgle, ” I used to call 
it, when I half began to cry, and laughed in the mid- 
dle of it. “I had a present of such a beautiful rib- 
bon, and I put it on; and Aunt Ildy has gone and 
made it back again into this.” 

Richard Hathaway took it up on his broad hand and 
turned it round. 

“Well,” he said, in his quiet way, “I always 
thought Miss Chism was a smart woman.” That was 
all the notice he took of it; and he laid it back, the 


PUNISHMENT. 


35 


limp gauze strings trailing down forlornly ftom the 
table. Whether that first suggested what came after, 
or whether he had seen her at it the night before, and 
had ample time for inspirations, I don’t know; but he 
took me off to the barn, and diverted my mind with 
chickens, and gray and white kittens, and Munchau- 
sen, his little spaniel puppy. I asked him what he 
called him so for, and he laughed, and said Jabez 
thought it was a good name, “’cause he was allers 
munchin’ and chawin’.” 

I saw the cows milked; and I milked one to the 
extent of a teaspoonful, myself; and I drank a mug 
full of white, warm, foaming milk, and then dipped 
off pure froth and sipped it, and I stood on a big rock 
in the middle of the barnyard, and watched the whole 
herd turned off down the green lane to find their pas- 
ture, and then we went in to breakfast. 

Richard brought Munchausen in and fed him in the 
kitchen. Aunt Ildy came down, and while Mrs. 
Hathaway took the brown, sweet biscuits out of the 
bake-kettle (there are no biscuits now so sweet as 
those that used to come to their perfection so, with 
the fervid embers heaped below and the coals of fire 
upon their heads), we all stood round the kitchen 
hearth and warmed ourselves, for it was a cool autumn 
morning; and then we went into the little tea-room, 
which was also breakfast-room, and night and morning 
condensed themselves together into an excess of con- 
tent for me. Richard went round through the hall to 
turn Mun out at the front door. He shut the break- 
fast-room door after him when he came in, to keep 
out Mun and the wind, he said. 

Mun, or the wind, or both, got in somewhere else, 
while we were at breakfast, where a door had not been 
shut. 

When we came out to get the sunshine in the broad 


36 


HITHERTO. 


porch, there was a great battle still going on ; a growl- 
ing, and a rushing, and a tearing, and a worrying, all 
up and down the grass-plat ; and Munchausen had got 
the best of it ; the strange thing with ears all over it 
and the two long tails, as he doubtless considered it, 
that had dared and enticed him by its bristling and 
fluttering when he and the wind looked in at the door, 
had drawn its own destruction down. Neither Aunt 
Ildy, nor the politicians of to-day, could ever have 
reconstructed that. 

“ What is it ? ” cried out Richard, running after the 
dog, and dragging a mouthful of straw and munched 
rag from him. 

“ What is it ? ” repeated Aunt Ildy, half in doubt 
herself at first, and then turning a swift scrutiny on 
me. “Why, it ’s Anstiss Dolbeare’s bonnet! That ’s 
what it is.” As much as to say, “Could a dog’s 
enormity go further than that? And now be as- 
tounded, if you please ! ” 

“Is it much hurt? ” asked Richard Hathaway, hold- 
ing it up, and speaking innocently. 

I never had such a good time before in all my child- 
life as I had wandering off through the sunny fields 
and sweet -smelling orchards in my cape-bonnet, that 
day, with him. Jabez drove Mrs. Hathaway and 
Aunt Ildy to Broadfields, to meeting ; and it was four 
o’clock when they came home to the Sunday tea-din- 
ner. 

Richard and I had carried our luncheon with us, of 
doughnuts and sage- cheese and peaches ; and had eaten 
it sitting on a great gray rock by the river. 


CHAPTER III. 

SOME PEOPLE, AND OTHER PEOPLE. 

Nobody would have believed, after all this, — I cer- 
tainly would not have believed it beforehand, — that 
the very next Sunday I should go to meeting in New 
Oxford, with Aunt Ildy, wearing a new Dunstable 
straw bonnet, with the identical blue scarf tied across 
it by Augusta Hare’s own hands. 

It was Augusta Hare who did it. Of course I told 
her all my troubles Monday morning, when she walked 
“ down street ” with the Edgells and me on our way to 
school. We had come in from the farm before break- 
fast, — before Uncle Royle’s, that is ; for Mrs. Hath- 
away would by no means let any guest depart from 
her door fasting; and we had had the nice biscuits out 
of the bake-kettle, and the coffee straight from the 
trivet over the coals, and brown-bread cream toast, and 
baked beans, left over the Sunday dinner, stirred to a 
delicious crispness in the spider, at a quarter to six, 
and at a few minutes after the hour had been on our 
way ; our wheels making clean lines along the fresh, 
damp road, where the heavy dew had very nearly been 
a white frost; and all the clearness and tingle and 
sparkle of far-off, rime-touched mountains and wide, 
breezy lakes coming down about us in the morning 
wind from the northwest. 

Everybody was worth winning, to Augusta Hare. 
The more difficult the approach, the more persevering 
would be her parallels. She had set to work to win 
Aunt Ildy. I wished her joy, at first, in her attempt ; 
then I stood by, wondering at her success. 


88 


BITHERTO. 


The truth was, Miss Chism was like the moon, — 
she had two faces : one turned always toward those she 
immediately belonged to, as she went round and round 
in her uncompromising orbit of daily work and duty ; 
the other toward the universe at large. The moon^ 
analogy fails here, or rather becomes a mystery ; 
whether she also wears a blander look out into space, 
toward the distant planets, — the desolation of her 
crags and craters being all heaped up on her earthward 
side, — may be or may not; one cannot change one’s 
position to remark; but when I saw Aunt Ildy from 
the standpoint of any who approached her from the 
outside spaces about our own life, I marveled at what 
a little strangerhood could do. She seemed ready to 
accredit such with all the virtues and graces that made 
up her ideal measure, by which such human creatures 
as had been closely proved and tried had miserably 
and ignominiously failed. There were nicks and 
blemishes and parts missing; the pieces, therefore, 
must be somewhere. She took it for granted that the 
Edgells were all that I was not. If I quoted them, 
thinking to make argument and precedent in my own 
behalf, I only got the consequent crushing comparison. 

“Yes; they hsLYe it; but I suppose they take care 
of their things;” or, “they do, or go, thus and 
thither, to be sure; but they are to be trusted; they 
behave.” 

I know of nothing at once more exasperating and 
demoralizing to a child than this ; it either knows a 
great deal better, and that its companions are subject 
to all the like infirmities with itself, and therefore 
impotently rages against the injustice ; or it comes to 
think, at last, cowed by continual disparagement and 
condemnation, that it is different from and meaner 
than its fellows, and so to sink into a hopeless, cring- 
ing, effortless self-despisal. 


SOME PEOPLE, AND OTHER PEOPLE. 39 

Augusta Hare came over that very Monday after- 
noon with a basket of fine Bartlett pears for Aunt Ildy 
from her uncle’s garden, with Mrs. Edgell’s love and 
compliments; also, she wanted one of Miss Chism’s 
wonderful receipts; she gave a hint, with an air of 
confidence and a half-aside from me, that she was 
making up a manuscript receipt-book for herself, 
against one of these days when she might come to want 
it; and Miss Chism’s nod, and relaxing, benignant 
smile toward her, and the hardness on the side of the 
face next me, — as if it were quite a pretty and natural 
thing for Augusta so to look forward, but that I need 
not pretend to understand or to be interested in what 
not only now, but at any distant period whatever, 
could by no possibility concern such as I; that, in 
fact, it was a presumption in me to be sitting by while 
she said it, or even to be living and growing up in a 
world where marrying and giving in marriage and 
having a house and a way and a life of one’s own could 
come to be in question, — was a marvelous and moon- 
like thing to see. But at that time I had not yet 
studied astronomy; I only felt unhappy, and that I 
was on the rough, craggy, cratery side, as usual. 

Never mind. Augusta beamed and sparkled, and 
was shone upon. And so she came round to the 
bonnet. 

She apologized so prettily for the liberty that per- 
haps she had taken; “but Miss Chism had not been by 
to ask, and she knew she was very busy. She was so 
used to trimming and untrimming for herself, alone in 
the world as she was, that she never considered; and 
did n’t Miss Chism think it was a good thing for girls 
to learn a knack of the sort, of contrivance and taste 
for themselves? They could have so much more va- 
riety, and it saved so much trouble and expense.” 

That last word, coming with such a charming def- 


40 


HITHERTO. 


erence to the duty of economy from the young heiress 
of a whole streetful of stores in H , and of un- 

known bank shares, finished it with Aunt Ildy. It 
was like a decorous occasional reverence manifested 
toward things sacred by a non-professor. 

“That was true,” she said, “where people had a 
knack, and would not be always wasting and spoiling. 
But the variety, she didn’t know about. She liked 
to wear things straight through, and make them last 
the season.” 

“ Oh, do you ? ” asked Augusta, with the most 
charming candor and confidence. “Well, now, I do 
like changing, if it ’s only to put a bow on the other 
side, or move my bed across my chamber. I’m al- 
ways turning things round; for my part, it seems to 
make them nicer and last longer.” 

“It’s very well to wear a carpet even,” admitted 
Aunt Ildy briefly. 

(The very next day, upon the strength of this, I 
tried it by putting the washstand and table in new 
places in our room, when I was sent up to make the 
bed; but the noise I made brought up Aunt Ildy, as 
if it had been an incantation. “Isn’t that pleas- 
anter?” I said timidly. “And you can get to the 
closet easier.” “Are you possessed, Anstiss Dolbeare? 
Put those things back; and when I’m ready for you 
to keep house for me, I ’ll let you know! ” So I 
found out, speedily enough, that some people are not 
other people.) 

Augusta was “so sorry to find that there had been 
an accident, — that the bonnet was quite spoiled. She 
was going down to the city with her uncle on Wednes- 
day, and could she do anything about replacing it for 
Miss Chism ? ” Perhaps she could get something pret- 
tier and cheaper than in New Oxford, and the new 
fall styles would be out there. 


SOME PEOPLE, AND OTHER PEOPLE. 41 

“Didn’t Miss Chism think a Dunstable would be 
better for cool weather, and more durable ? It could 
always be bleached and pressed so nicely, you know.” 

And when, by degrees, she had brought Miss Chism 
to listen indulgently to all this, — “Wouldn’t she, to 
show she was n’t offended, just let Anstiss wear the 
blue ribbon, after all ? ” 

All this by degrees, as I say, carefully feeling her 
steps. She stayed to tea, and praised Aunt Ildy’s 
drop-cakes, and fell in love with the pink-edged cups, 
and insisted on having a towel and helping to wipe 
them up afterward, and she wanted to learn cribbage, 
and got her first initiation into the mysteries of “fif- 
teen two, fifteen four,” while she was bringing it 
about; and the end was, almost without Aunt Ildy 
knowing it, that she was led round to the very point 
she had set herself against. Only it was a concession 
to Augusta Hare, and to circumstances, and by no 
means for the sake of pleasing me. The gauze ribbons 
were chewed up; and the blue scarf now was “in the 
house.” Aunt Ildy could not have so gone against 
her creed and her instinct, as to “buy new when old 
would do.” It had been on and off, and laid by; it 
was old now, in a sense; the idea, at least, had 
ceased to be so offensively new to Aunt Ildy, and her 
indignation had been appeased. I sat by, and let 
them settle it ; as if, through my fault and my punish- 
ment and my mortification, it had ceased to be of much 
consequence to me how they decided. I did not do 
this, I think, of deliberate art, but as simply taking 
the attitude Aunt Ildy would expect of me ; and so 
things came round. 

Only I was worse off by a suffering and a disappoint- 
ment, and a chilled, repulsed, inferior feeling, and a 
premature lesson in diplomacy, and Aunt Ildy by the 
price of a new Dunstable straw bonnet. 


42 


HITHERTO. 


I wonder why such trifling episodes as these stand 
out first and most clearly when I think of those young 
days ? All my life, to be sure, was made up of small, 
commonplace things; but why these should so live and 
last, stamped so ineffaceably in their least details, — 
that is what surprises me sometimes. Ah, it is not 
the form life takes, but the living ! Under these trifles 
of outward experience, something intense and ineradi- 
cable was shaping and vitalizing; the moods and im- 
pressions which these influences induced were becom- 
ing myself; were determining my whole nature and 
fate. 

I used to wonder, in a vague way, if ever things 
would begin to concern me as they concerned others. 
If I should ever have a definite part — an interest of 
my own — in this earnest, urgent living that I saw 
about me in a world upon whose mere skirts, as yet, I 
seemed to hang. I think Aunt Ildy would have been 
frightened sometimes, if she could have known the 
turn my repressed and restless thoughts and half-un- 
derstood longings were taking. I used to like to walk 
in the burial-ground, I remember; the “graveyard,” 
as we used lugubriously to call it then, when churches 
were “meeting-houses; ” and I used to feel sure of that 
one thing only: that this, at least, would come to me, 
as it came to all; that I should lie there with a grave- 
stone at my head; and it seemed to me that I should 
he of more consequence then than I had ever been be- 
fore. I even wondered if Aunt Ildy would think 
things “worth while,” then, for me, as for anybody 
else ? Whether she would let a gravestone be carved, 
and whether she would really wear a black bonnet, if 
I died? I could not, somehow, conceive of her doing 
so, only for me. So many things now, in my life- 
time, never were worth while. 

Augusta Hare went av/ay from New Oxford at last, 


SOME PEOPLE, AND OTHER PEOPLE. 43 

in a fresh grandeur and environment of dignity and 
romance. After many indecisions about the school to 
which she should be sent, her own strong wish had car- 
ried the day against some prejudices of her uncle, and 
it was decided for her to go to the convent of Ursu- 
line nuns at Charlestown, near Boston. Her musical 
education, in which there was a real talent to be taken 
into account, was the chief consideration in influencing 
this result. 

For nights, I could not sleep soundly, after I heard 
of this. My imagination was stirred by all that was 
most poetical and picturesque ; to say nothing of the 
religious element, which added sublimity and awe. 
To live among cloistered women, wearing solemn, typ- 
ical black veils, to call them Sister Mary and Sister 
Agnes and Sister Annunciata, as they were called in 
the stories I had read, to hear matins and vespers, to 
worship in a chapel, to eat in a refectory, to recite 
lessons to people who had just done mystical penance ! 
To have all this combined with the charm of ordinary 
boarding-school association, so great to me, — girls of 
an age classed together for study, for recreation, for 
sleep even, — having the community and sympathy in 
all things which made even rigid rules a delight, and 
stealthy grumblings and stolen privileges an ecstasy! 
I got all this jumble of fanciful ideas into my head, 
and at this time there was nothing that seemed so 
beautiful or so intensely desirable to me as to go to a 
convent ; as a nun, if possible ; at least, as a scholar. 
I was so proud of Augusta Hare’s notice, and of know- 
ing her so well! I told Lucretia over and over, all 
that this heroine of mine could tell to me, for the 
mere pleasure of saying the words; I dare say, al- 
though she was older and more sensible, and used to 
remarkable things, Augusta’s own pleasure in answer- 
ing my curiosity was not so very different. 


44 


HITHERTO. 


The Edgells went away to school soon after; they 
were disappointed in not being with their cousin ; but 
though he had yielded in her case, Mr. Edgell was 
firm as regarded his daughters. It happened at last 
that they and Laura Cope became pupils at the same 
institution, a young ladies’ seminary in a town some 
thirty miles from New Oxford. 

I spent an afternoon with them just before they 
left. I saw their new trunks with 'their own names 
upon them, packed with all manner of nice, plentiful 
clothing, to be worn at their own discretion, and with 
numberless articles of ladylike convenience suggested 
by motherly forethought or their own wish. How 
beautifully their ruffles were all crimped ! I saw Mrs. 
Edgell doing one with a delicate, thin-bladed, ivory 
knife, as she sat in her little sewing-room where the 
girls ran in and out, bringing me with them, asking 
half a hundred questions, and contriving dozens of new 
wants. She was not impatient with them; her plea- 
sure was in theirs. Oh, yes ; it was the really poetical 
and beautiful thing to have an own mother ! 

I went “ down street ” with them to the confection- 
er’s, where they laid in store of “goodies” to take 
to school. They spent, I think, three dollars apiece, 
that afternoon ; and we came home laden with fragrant 
white paper parcels. There were things among them 
that I never had heard the names of before ; but then, 
I had never had three dollars in my life to spend in 
confectionery, or at my own pleasure in any way. 

After this, my days “went on and on.” If I could 
escape disgrace with Aunt Hdy, and get into Lucretia’s 
room in the afternoon with my mending, or into the 
garden with a book, it was the sum of my desire and 
expectation. My lessons were a pleasure to me; I 
was ambitious and bright. I could learn fast, and 
keep the head of my class. I brought home my weekly 


SOME PEOPLE, AND OTHER PEOPLE. 45 

reports, and Uncle Royle signed them; he would have 
a kind word for me when they were all “sixes and 
sevens, ” which, contrary to proverbial usage, indicated 

the best possible order of things on Mr. B ’s book; 

as to Aunt Ildy, I don’t remember her even looking at 
them. She inspected my stockings, after I had darned 
them ; and they had need to be firmly done, even to an 
improvement on the original texture ; for if her strong 
fingers could go through a thin place, or make them- 
selves visible under a careless cross-threading, there 
would be no saving of time for me in that ! I accused 
her, sometimes, with rebellious indignation, oi 'punch- 
ing holes ; it occurs to me that her fashion of moral 
inspection and criticism was not far otherwise. 

I wore my Dunstable straw with the blue ribbon all 
the way on into November until Thanksgiving. I got 
tired to death of it ; I believe Aunt Ildy knew I would, 
and that that was part of my punishment. She gave 
me my request, but sent leanness into my soul. It 
had been a very pretty passing fashion, retained only 
just so long as it could be what it expressed, a fresh- 
ness and an unpremeditation; an impromptu of trim- 
ming, caught up and put on carelessly; but it came, 
with me, to be a thing as old and worn as a shoestring. 
I had to tie it on myself every time I wore my bonnet ; 
and I had not Augusta Hare’s adroit fingers. The 
ropy part twisted itself longer and longer with every 
wearing, and the wrinkles came down into the floating 
ends, the bow withered, and would not stay picked out. 
It came to ironing, and the whole looked streaked and 
faded. Other girls had new fall trimmings of bright 
crimsons and warm browns, crossed snugly around the 
crowns, and nice bows made once for all on the top; 
while I put my bonnet on still, as I said privately to 
Lucretia, with a garter. It was the bare prose that 
all things came to, for me. 


46 


HITHERTO. 


1 began to wish, at scarcely thirteen, that I could 
be really good enough not to care for anything. I had 
been good, a little, several times already, and given 
it up. In moments of spiritual depression, therefore, 
I feared, already, lest all should be over with me, and 
that I could never be saved. I thought I must be the 
one unmitigated thing or the other; that if I gave a 
thought to my new shoes, or took it into my head to 
curl my hair, or cared for my composition getting the 
highest mark and being read out on a Saturday, that I 
might as well leave off reading my Bible and saying 
my prayers. Indeed, I truly believed that I should 
be a hypocrite if I kept on. I must go in at the 
wicket-gate with Christian, and follow the toilsome 
way, or I must stay in the City of Destruction, and 
live the life of it. I must choose between the “Pil- 
grim’s Progress” and my dear old novels; and so it 
would be that sometimes one and sometimes the other 
would get the better of it with me. Aunt Ildy be- 
lieved in nothing that I did. She could see, of course, 
when I was trying; she gave me no credit for it at the 
time, — it was only one of my whims ; she helped my 
unsteadiness with no Christianly patience ; but I heard 
of it afterward, when I had grown bad again; she 
“thought the goodness wouldn’t last long.” 

I wondered what the real world-and-devil-proof 
goodness was made of ; what it was that happened to 
people who were truly converted. 

There was an awakened religious interest in the 
town this very winter; there were Thursday prayer- 
meetings for church-members, which Aunt Ildy at- 
tended, and there were Bible-classes and inquiry-meet- 
ings for the young. I went regularly every Wednes- 
day, at one time, to the minister’s house; this was 
when my bonnet was at the worst. I heard of one 
after another having become hopeful, — between night 


SOME PEOPLE, AND OTHER PEOPLE. 47 

and morning, perhaps ; it was the news at school. I 
looked wonderingly at companions who yesterday were 
sinners and to-day were saints. I questioned why, 
with the same means of grace, and the same wish and 
effort, as I believed, it did not come to me. I kept 
on patiently for a while, thinking that it would ; but 
I could never honestly declare that it had. I was 
tempted profanely to compare it with Augusta Hare’s 
boarding-school pudding, which she had declined, for 
the reason that she saw it wouldn’t go round; indeed, 
precisely what I was to look for, of intense illumina- 
tion or ecstasy, or vital, conscious, immediate change, 
was to me the mystery; and at last, one cold Sunday, 
Aunt Ildy brought out my wine-colored merino coat 
that I had worn three winters, and my bonnet, to 
which had been given the day before its contemporary 
winter fittings of the same color, — lining of good, 
thick, old-fashioned satin, and trimming of narrow 
velvet bands, — in which I felt always better dressed 
than in anything else I ever wore ; and I became sud- 
denly and hopelessly worldly again. Because I did 
take comfort in them, after the pale, stringy, tiresome 
blue ribbon, and such comfort was incompatible with 
the renouncing of the flesh. Such was my religious 
experience at thirteen. Out of it I came honest, and 
that was all. 

Speculatively, I was at work, even then, upon mat- 
ters of faith. These came to me by suggestion, in my 
daily studies. I was learning chemistry this winter, 
and at the same time Paley’s “Natural Theology;” 
all about the watch, — in that first page, which, of 
whatever book, comes to be the page by heart of the 
youthful reader or student, — and then about the bones ; 
in the other science, about the attractions, the affini- 
ties, the atomic theory, and the forms of matter, — 
solids, fluids, and gases ; and what Swedenborgianism 


48 


HITHERTO, 


calls the “correspondence of things ” began to show 
itself to me. I had not got far among the bones ; but 
an older class was near the end of the book ; and one 
day, — I was in the upper room of the academy now, 

— there happened a talk between this class and Mr. 

B , our teacher. Their lessons for the day oc- 

curred in the chapter on the Personality of the Deity. 
The talk was upon the different mental conceptions of 
God ; the image under which we think of Him, since 
some image, consciously or unconsciously, we must 
make to ourselves. He was spoken of as pure, per- 
vading spirit, everywhere and in all things ; “ in whom 
we live and move and have our being, ” enfolding us as 
the air enfolds the earth, filling all space, animating 
all life, quickening all spirit. Without touching upon 
dogma, in which I now think he would not have taught 

us as many of us were taught elsewhere, Mr. B 

spoke of all this, in illustration of the idea possible to 
us of Omnipresent Being; and some girl asked sud- 
denly, crimsoning with timidity as she did so, while I 
crimsoned with sympathy, “If He is everywhere and 
fills all, how can any other spirit be created and find 
room? ” 

I forget what our teacher answered ; I do not know 
that I even listened to it. I only know that with a 
sudden tingle all through me, soul and body, what 
seemed a great perception came to me, — an answer 
out of the chemical laws and facts that I was learning, 

— the sentence of Dalton, that “different gases are 
as vacuums in respect to each other ; ” that space does 
not hinder them ; that they can diffuse, one into an- 
other, intermingling, yet not combining; coexisting, 
and yet separate. Behind this wonder of material 
fact, the spiritual truth that was enshrined blazed 
forth. I got into my soul a revelation of all possible 
spiritual closeness and presence; ideas, old enough in 


SOME PEOPLE, AND OTHEB PEOPLE. 49 

the world, perhaps, but that came, new and grand, to 
me, thrilled and stimulated me; I began my life- 
climb. 

Meanwhile, pondering these things in my heart, I 
remained at the outside but a faulty, fitful child; 
scarcely happy at home, and of no consequence else- 
where; before whom the world looked at once tame 
and strange, barren and teeming, mystical and dreary. 


CHAPTER IV. 

WHAT A VOICE TELLS. 

THE SILENT SIDE. 

A STORY by halves : yes ; but that is not altogether 
enough either. Something else — a third — must con- 
cern itself, now and then. No matter how, no matter 
who knows and tells, or how they found it out. Two 
halves do not necessarily make a whole one. The 
world is dual, we are told; all creation running to 
pairs and complements; oxygen and nitrogen, oxygen 
and hydrogen; night and day, up and down, right and 
left; but there is always something behind; an affin- 
ity, a force, a backbone; chemical attraction, cen- 
trifugal and centripetal power, gravitation, structural 
centre. That is what something or somebody has got 
to be to whatever else comes to be told, or to be gath- 
ered to a unit, at last ; else it might stay in halves, or 
piecemeal, forever. Ask no questions, therefore, for 
conscience’ or arithmetic’s sake; if there be a com- 
bining agency, it is enough; whether it work from 
sight or record, hearsay or intuition, or here and there 
from each and all. A silent story never will tell 
itself; not even, as a story, to itself. That which 
wrought in thought and heart-throbs, without words, 
which took form in unnoticed, unobtrusive act, whose 
truest pathos was hidden under commonplace, must be 
rescued by some undeclared knowledge or insight, and 
translated, as best it may be, into words. It will be 
only a translation, after all. None can repeat these 
things as they truly write themselves, all around us, 
in the originals. 


WHAT A VOICE TELLS. 


51 


Outside circumstances also, the bearing down and 
closing in of all that shapes and alters, intermingles 
with and concerns ; these must round out and perfect 
the meaning, and interpret for our behoof. Stories 
outside of stories, and beside them; that is the way 
the world is woven together. 

Richard Hathaway was jogging along up the river 
road toward Broadfields from New Oxford, one win- 
ter’s day, about the time, or a little later than that, 
of these things that Anstiss Dolheare has been remem- 
bering. 

The leather reins lay loosely along his horse’s back; 
the horse taking way and time for himself ; the sleigh- 
bells marking the regular double-beat upon the air of 
his slow-dropping hoofs. 

Richard Hathaway was thinking. Feeling, per- 
haps, most ; that grand, unselfish, loving, patient, 
pitiful heart of his (what kind of a man, pray, do you 
describe when you speak of a heart like that?) took 
the lead always; the clear, quiet brain followed, and 
worked out the impulse. Did not prescribe it ; there 
is that order and distinction of life in the natural his- 
tory of vertebrates, — species, human, — albeit not 
laid down in books of the science. Richard Hatha- 
way, belonging to the first of these orders of life, — 
born, moreover, to a plain sphere and simple duties, — 
was not brilliant. Slow, perhaps, sometimes, in com- 
ing to conclusion or opinion; never slow or slack in 
act, when he saw the thing to be done ; always stanch 
and sure; right there ; loyal to the backbone; careful 
.and kind for his mother, for every human creature ; 
*for his horse and his dog ; for every chicken and kitten 
on the place. All over the farm the dumb creatures 
knew his ways and his voice, and went trooping after 
him. It seems to me that the nature of such a man 
has something of the great divine element in it ; some- 


52 


BITHERTO. 


thing that goes toward the Fatherhood of God himself, 
— rather than anything small or weak, as some might 
say. 

He was dressed in his everyday homespun, to-day; 
they wore homespun yet, of a week-day, the plain men 
about Broadfields and New Oxford, who ploughed 
their own lands and drove their own teams to market ; 
and the hum of the old grandmother’s spinning-wheel 
was heard yet in many an upper chamber. There was 
nothing, truly, in his outer bearing and equipment 
that bespoke him grand or chivalrous or knightly ; that 
is why I must translate the silent side. A simple 
soul, come to his young manhood half a dozen centu- 
ries too late for vigil and accolade, and vow and em- 
prise ; he had not ridden forth that morning in plumed 
helmet and shining armor, with lance in rest; not 
even in a chariot and six, like Sir Charles Grandison; 
he had only driven an old horse in a large wagon- 
sleigh to carry some barrels of apples and some tubs of 
cider apple-sauce down to New Oxford for the distant 
city market; but I will tell you what he had done. 
He knew of somebody who needed him, and a small 
kindness that he could give and never forgot, and he 
had come back four miles around out of his way in the 
stinging winter cold after an errand to the next village 
below, that he might return through New Oxford; 
that he might stop again at Royle Chism’s, and look 
in at the post-office, where there was precious little 
likelihood of anything more for him since morning, 
when he had got two letters, his mail for the week; 
that he might also go into the back sitting-room, and 
stay talking with Miss Chism for nearly an hour, till 
Anstiss came from afternoon school, and he could see 
for himself how she was to-day, and give her the pear- 
mains he had in his pocket for her, — such pearmains 
as grew only on the Hathaway place, and there on but 


WHAT A VOICE TELLS. 


53 


one old tree. He hadn’t had a chance fairly to see 
her in the morning; only through the kitchen door, as 
she sat there busy about something for Aunt Ildy, 
which it would have been a little piece of anarchy for 
her to leave. 

He was riding home now, thinking some such 
thoughts as these : — 

“Mother doesn’t know. How should she? She 
does n’t see them every week, or oftener, as I do. 
She does n’t see the little face light up, and then the 
cowed-down, miserable look come over it, when that 
woman, that ought to be a mother to her, comes near ; 
and the child don’t dare to let her notice that she ’s 
taking a minute’s comfort, for fear it should be cut 
short and she be ordered off. She always is ordered 
off. Why can’t she have an idle minute, I wonder? 
People can’t grow unless they have a chance to stretch 
now and then, — men and women, any more than ba- 
bies ; to say nothing of a young, longing thing like her. 

‘“Mother couldn’t interfere, either, I suppose, if 
she did know. Everybody says Miss Chism does her 
duty by the child; and it ’s only her way. I wonder 
if the way people get with them isn’t something to be 
accountable for, though ? I ’ve no business to think 
about it, perhaps, not being religious ; but what if the 
Lord Almighty did so by us? What if He had a 
‘way ’ too, that had n’t any sunshine, nor any pleas- 
antness, nor any rest in it? He might grind us 
round, so, somehow, I dare say ; and give us our daily 
bread, notwithstanding. Start up, old Putterkoo. 
Nobody asked you to meditate. 

“I wish I had her by me now, riding out to the 
farm; to suck sweet cider and hunt hens’ eggs, and 
help mother make her Thanksgiving. Why need Aunt 
Ildy have snubbed her so, if she could nH be trusted 
to beat sponge cake ? She might do something, I 


54 


HITHERTO. 


guess, besides stone those eternal raisins. The way 
to make folks trusty is to begin to trust. I'^d trust 
her, with that little, earnest, pleading way of hers, if 
it was the spoiling of a mess or so. 

“She thinks too much. She’s continually worry- 
ing about what-fors and whys. Look in her face some- 
times, you ’d supjDose she was twenty. I ’d like to 
set the clock back for her a good half-dozen years; 
she ’d gain, then. 

“I wish Miss Ildy ’d — get married, or something 
else. Or they might be burnt out, and nobody hurt, 
and not much loss ; or that somebody in England would 
leave ’em a fortune that ’d have to be gone after. 
Something ought to come to pass. I ’d like to get 
her home with us awhile. It ’s the kind of a place 
where she ’d ought to be. 

“Miss Ildy says she ’s fractious and flighty and im- 
pudent. I ’d risk it. I never saw anything of it, 
and I ’ve seen her when I should have been all three. 
‘That’s because it’s you,’ says Miss Chism. ‘She 
knows when to hold her tongue.’ It seems to me 
that ’s sufficient, and she ’s learnt early. And it 
would be for me — and mother. 

“We could n’t do all she ’d want, I know. She 
wants somebody to answer the what-fors. I don’t 
know as she ’ll ever find that, though. It ’s more 
asking than answering in this world, in most things. 
Asking back again, or asking on. Books and sermons 
don’t amount to much more. 

“She wants somebody now, right off, to make a 
pleasantness round her. That ’s what people can do 
for each other. She don’t seem to get any child-com- 
fort. She ’s never been taken up in anybody’s lap. 
Miss Chism won’t cosset anything. She says it gives 
kittens fits. That settles the matter, I suppose, for 
all creation. 


WHAT A VOICE TELLS. 


65 


“I wish mother could see any way to manage. 
‘Winter’s no time,’ she says. ‘The best room ’s 
cold, and Miss Chism wouldn’t think of coming.’ 
But there ’s the little press-room between mother’s and 
the kitchen, if Nansie could only come by herself. 
That ’s as warm as need be, and not lonesome. 

“They need not be afraid about her getting there. 
I ’d wrap her up in buffaloes till she wouldn’t know 
she was outdoors. 

“I ’ll try Miss Chism myself. It ’ll never do to 
stop her school, and give her nothing else to take up 
her mind. She ’d only be pining after her books. 
Royle Chism is talking of that. ‘She’s ailing,’ he 
says, ‘and she shall leave off studying and have the 
doctor.’ Perhaps I could put a kink into Royle ’s 
head, and he into the doctor’s. A change is always 
easy to prescribe; and Pulsifeare ’s an honest old 
soul, who wouldn’t shove aside common- sense for the 
sake of hanging on with pills and visits. 

“ She was pretty still and sober to-day ; and she 
went right off upstairs with her books. She didn’t 
know how long I ’d been waiting. Perhaps she ’d 
missed a lesson, along of those raisins in the morning. 
I dare say she ’s tired of the pearmains; I’ll carry 
her something else next time. I ’ll shell out some 
butternuts and shagbarks; and maybe mother ’ll make 
some candy.” 

Very homely thoughts; and homely consolations that 
he planned. It is plain that he could put none of the 
poetry that Anstiss Dolbeare longed for against the 
weary prose of her life, is it not? Are you sure, 
though, what the poetry of life is, when spiritual 
analysis gets it down to its very elements? 

A week later, there was a great stir in the little 
press-room. Boxes and trunks were drawn out from 
under the broad shelf that ran across one whole side. 


56 


HITHERTO. 


against a window ; blankets and comfortables that had 
been piled upon it were taken down, and all were car- 
ried away to an upstairs room, and bestowed in a 
large, light closet. The shelf itself was removed, 
and then the sunlight got in at the window, and the 
little apartment, which had used in old times to be a 
bedroom, showed its real dimensions. 

Richard and his man Jabez did all this ; and then 
Mrs. Hathaway’s Martha came in and swept and 
scoured. A cot bedstead was put up, and a triangular 
shelf across a corner was transformed by a white cover 
and a flounce to a quaint little dressing-table, elegant 
enough in its way, with a looking-glass in a carved 
frame tilted forward from the angle above it, and a 
great rufiled pin- cushion lying before it, and a silver 
candlestick and snuffers standing beside. In another 
corner was a washing-stand, with a high old china 
ewer, and broad, shallow basin, — buff, with delicate 
roses running and blowing all over them. Richard had 
remembered these old things, and would have them 
got out, for he knew they would just suit Anstiss 
Holbeare’s fancy; “and she ’s to be pleased, you see, 
mother; that’s the main thing, now; that’s what’s 
to do her good.” 

“It’ll be mild to-morrow,” he was thinking to 
himself, stopping there when all was done, as he came 
through from Mrs. Hathaway’s room, and looked out 
at the bright little window that seemed to sparkle all 
over with delight at its own capacity to take in sun- 
shine as fast, in proportion, as its biggers and betters, 
when opportunity was given, and where the long slants 
from the clear west struck through and smote them- 
selves obliquely upon the face of the mirror opposite, 
diverging thence by just the angle of reflection to light 
up the roses on the buff china, opposite again ; like a 
sort of dance figure as it was, leading up and across 


WHAT A VOICE TELLS. 57 

till all the little place was gay, and everything had 
had its turn. 

“The wind ’s stilled down, and the sky looks mel- 
low. I ’ll take the little sleigh, and the two big 
robes and the foot-stove. We ’ll get her here just 
about this time, and mother ’ll bring her into this lit- 
tle nest, and speak to her in her kind way, and make 
her welcome. It ’s a complete home of itself where 
mother is. She ’s a good woman. And when you 
say a good woman you ’ve said a whole Bible full. 

“Let me see, though; the little sleigh? There’s 
that trace to be mended. Jabez ’ll have the small 
pung, and he ’ll want a light harness, too. Lucky I 
thought of it! And it ’s a chance if he’s got those 
carrots up from the cider-mill cellar, while I ’ve been 
putter-kooing here. 

“Mun, you rascal! what are you looking for? 
Straw bonnets ? Can’t have ’em. Off with you, sir! 
Somebody at the door, hey? Tell ’em I’m coming. 
Hope it ’s Kilham, about that bargain. If I can get 
him down to sixty, it ’ll be three hundred, and that ’s 
enough ; a fair trade for both ; and it just squares my 
upland. Half a dozen years hence, if I ’ve any luck, 
it ’ll be the finest ” — 

The silent side is fragmentary; a man doesn’t 
think on in a straight line through a mile-long chap- 
ter; neither does he think all on one thread. Richard 
Hathaway was a good farmer, and a stirring man ; all 
the more is it proof of his great kindness that he could 
stay, as he called it, “putter-kooing ” here. 

Anstiss Dolbeare remembers what came next. 


CHAPTER V. 


JASPER. 

What a new living it was to me all at once when 
they let me go out to the farm, that winter! Uncle 
Royle and the doctor and the Hathaways managed it. 
Aunt Ildy didn’t really object; but she went round 
with that way of hers that seemed to be saying all the 
time, “Oh, yes ; you ’ve contrived! ” It made me have 
a mean, guilty feeling all the time she was packing up 
my things, as if I ’d stolen her cake, or something. 

She always thought I contrived. I did ask her for 
things sometimes, when Uncle Royle was in the room. 
I saved up my asking till he was there, when I wanted 
anything very much indeed ; and I suppose this was 
contriving; but I always asked her; and I never went 
to him after she had said no. I don’t know but most 
people would put an umbrella up, if they had one, 
when it was likely to rain. I forgot the umbrella 
often enough, however, for many a sprinkle to dampen 
my best things. 

It was as if I had died and gone to heaven, almost. 

The air w^s so soft that afternoon, with the softness 
that comes in a south wind over the snow; so tender, 
so promising of the warmth waiting somewhere, and 
coming by and by. In an air like that, you can seem 
to smell the very blue of the sky, and the pure sweet- 
ness of the river water; there are no flowers, or grass, 
or leaves; so where else can the pleasantness come 
from ? 

I was almost too warm, wrapped up in the big buffa- 
loes, and Mrs. Hathaway had sent her foot-stove, be- 


JASPER, 


59 


sides. Richard did not tell me that till we drove off. 
Aunt Ildy had a foot-stove, too, and there was a soap- 
stone that she kept in the oven; hut she had not 
thought of them, and it was better not to say any- 
thing. I should never have thought of Aunt Ildy’s 
foot-stove being warmed up for me. He just tucked 
it under my feet after we started. I suppose he got 
hot coals out of the office before I came downstairs. 
Richard Hathaway always thought of everything. 

He asked me if I thought I could be contented. He 
told me of the things that we could do in the evenings ; 
he had made a fox-and-geese board for me, with mor- 
rice on the other side. I did n’t know morrice, but 
he would show me ; and we would pop corn, and roast 
great sweet apples, and make candy such as that Mrs. 
Hathaway sent me. He would crack the nuts, and I 
should pick them out, while Mrs. Hathaway would stir 
the molasses and sugar. And the Kilhams would 
come over and take tea, and we would play games. 
I was not to think nor to study; but just to be “as 
little a girl as I could,” he said. 

I felt like such a little girl while he was talking! 
Such a little girl as I had never, really, been. I be- 
lieve there is something childish in me now that can go 
back to that, if ever anybody makes much of me, I 
had so little of it when I was small. I have noticed 
that in myself, always; that the feelings and wants 
that got least answered in the time of them kept fresh- 
est into the later years ; always ready to live their life 
and take their good whenever it could come. I think 
it may be so, on beyond the grave. I think that some 
of our disappointed longings keep us fresh for what 
waits for us there. 

Something simple and sweet touches and fills me, 
thinking of those days, and that coming to the Hatha- 
ways. I can only say over to myself the things that 


60 


HITHERTO. 


I remember then, in the very easiest and most unpre- 
tending words, as a child would. 

Mrs. Hathaway kissed me when she lifted me out 
on the doorstone. Nobody ever kissed me at home. 
Uncle Royle never thought of it, and Aunt Ildy did n’t 
approve of kissing. She thought people could show 
their love in better ways. Sometimes, when I had 
been very sorry for some naughtiness, and meant truly 
to be good, and thought if I only had been always good 
Aunt Ildy might have loved me, for that she was a 
good woman, and said she always loved what deserved 
it, — when I wanted so to creep into a little corner of 
her heart, seeing that if I hadn’t her I hadn’t any- 
body, and to be allowed at least to care for her, — I 
would do something, some very disagreeable and tedious 
thing, perhaps, that she had given me, very nicely and 
patiently, and be very gentle and mindful all day; 
and then at night I would go up to her and put my 
arms round her, and kiss her. She would let me do 
this, at such times ; and it made me very happy. I 
don’t remember her ever kissing me back. 

But Mrs. Hathaway kissed me on both cheeks, and 
then she took me through the hall and the breakfast- 
room, to a little room I never remembered seeing be- 
fore, just beside the kitchen and opening into it. Such 
a dear little place ! A low window looking right out 
on to a bank where the white snow lay then, but the 
green grass would be in summer, and the sunset stream- 
ing in ; a shining yellow floor, and a strip of warm 
carpet in the middle; a little flounced corner toilet- 
table, and a washstand, with what looked like a 
basket and a vase of roses to wash out of and to hold 
the water ; hooks to hang my clothes on, a door each 
way; — into the kitchen and her chamber. 

“You won’t mind my coming through,” she said. 
“And the kitchen makes it warm.” 


JASPER, 


61 


Everything makes it warm!” I couldn’t help 
answering, just so ; and I turned round and put up my 
face to kiss her again. Somehow, one always knows 
when one may do that. I have often thought of it; it 
is as if the kiss were waiting. 

She had made it so beautiful for me! If it were 
only just not a visit, but I could live there always. 
There was just that pain in it. , It was not really my 
life, but more like the afternoons I spent with the 
Edgells, only greater; a piece lent me out of other 
people’s lives. 

I remember how piercing cold it was next morning. 
Down came the wind from the northwest, — from the 
polar plains, and the frozen lakes, and the great, 
bleak mountain ridges, whose peaks are always radiat- 
ing off the warmth of the earth’s heart into space, and 
down whose sides rush the fierce blasts that come out 
of the chill and emptiness, angry at the comfort that 
nestles about sheltered human homes, to howl and 
shriek at it and rend it away. Only a little corner, 
though, here and there, can they touch and lift, show- 
ing so the deep, safe soul and glow of it, in homes like 
Hathaway farmhouse. 

I remember how Richard came in to the breakfast - 
room, rubbing his hands, from his early visit to the 
barns and the cattle; and how we heard Jabez stamp- 
ing and puffing into the kitchen ; how the coffee 
steamed, and how the sun sparkled in through the 
frosted windows ; how the old cat stretched by the fire, 
and the great logs crackled and hissed out froth and 
steam at their ends, and my forehead and cheeks, 
burned as I sat in the low chair in the corner. 

“Not a bit in the way,” Mrs. Hathaway said when 
I asked her. I could n’t help feeling as if I ought 
to move, though, and making little involuntary stirs 
every time she came near. I was so used to it with 


62 


HITHERTO. 


Aunt Ildy. She always wanted something just where 
I was, or to poke the fire, or brush the hearth, or I 
was started off upon an errand to the kitchen, or she 
had seen something of mine lying about ; and it was, 
— “There are your books, Anstiss, on the kitchen 
table; ” or, “Your coat ’s down, in the corner behind 
the entry door;” or, “You haven’t taken the bed- 
clothes off and opened the window.” Nobody can tell 
what a rest it was to me, when I did get used to it a 
little, to feel that I might sit still sometimes and not 
be routed out. 

Mrs. Hathaway and Aunt Ildy were both good 
housekeepers ; but this was the difference between 
them. Everything got done at the farm, as regularly 
as at Uncle Royle’s, only nobody was put out. Mrs. 
Hathaway did not hesitate to make me of use in little 
ways; but somehow it never interfered. It made 
Aunt Ildy restless, — in her conscience, I verily be- 
lieve, — only to see a person reading a book, or warm- 
ing her feet, or sitting at a window to watch the sun- 
set, — so long as she could possibly find anything for 
her to do. I never could help thinking of Aunt Ildy 
when I read in the Bible of Martha of Bethany. I 
have wondered, since I have been older, if it might 
not have been just that uncomfortdbleness that the 
Lord rebuked in her. 

It was such pretty work to put the little press- 
chamber straight ! I wished so I might ever have a 
little place like that all to myself, at home; and I 
thought over what little inventions of adornment I 
might dare to introduce, if I should. 

We made cake that morning, — Mrs. Hathaway 
and I. She expected some young folks to tea, she 
said, the next night. 

She gave me the pleasant parts. I beat up the 
whites of the eggs while she did the yolks. At home 


JASPER. 


63 


I always had to beat the yolks. Martha stirred the 
butter and sugar; and then the beautiful silver and 
gold of the eggs were added, and Mrs. Hathaway put 
the great wooden spoon into my hand, and asked me 
to “toss it together while she could see to the flour,” 
that was not quite cool from the drying. I cut up the 
citron while she heat the heavier mixture of the whole. 
“Take a little toll, Nansie, if you like,” she told me. 
“/ can’t cut up citron without a bit in my mouth.” 
It did n’t seem like work; it was clear play. 

In the afternoon, Richard came in early. He 
showed me morrice before tea; and we played in the 
firelight till I could beat him, making a whip-row 
every time. I felt afraid we should use up everything 
in one day, I was having such a good time. 

But there was always something new, or something 
that did not use up. Richard found me “Gulliver’s 
Travels,” and “Baron Munchausen.” I read these in 
the mornings, when Mrs. Hathaway was busy with 
things I could not help her in. The Kilhams came 
to tea the second night ; and we played old-fashioned 
games of cards: “Lend me your bundle, neighbor,” 
and “Old Maid.” How they all laughed when Rich- 
ard Hathaway was left Old Maid ! But then he made 
up such funny faces when he got the queen ; everybody 
always knew where she was. Yes, — I do feel like a 
child again, thinking these things over. In the light 
of all that has happened since, I go back to them with 
something besides that simpleness; they seem sacred 
to me. 

We had a party one night, at last, — a real country 
party. The great sitting-room and the best parlor 
were lighted up with wood-fires and candles in the old 
silver branches under the round mirrors ; and the stove 
in the hall was almost red-hot, but it had a high sheet- 
iron fender round it ; and we danced reels, and played 


64 


HITHERTO. 


“Blind-man’s Buff,” and “Still Palm,” and “I had 
as many wives,” and forfeits. I had to “bow to the 
wittiest, kneel to the prettiest, and kiss the one I 
loved best.” So I bowed to Jeffrey Freeman, — he 
was the funny young man of the neighborhood; he 
joked till nobody ever suspected him of being in 
earnest ; they said that was the reason he never got 
married; he said it was the reason he had n’t been a 
minister. 

There was no doubt about the prettiest. Lucy Kil- 
ham was like a wild rose, so simple and bright and 
delicate. 

There was not much question as to the loving best ; 
I looked about for dear Mrs. Hathaway; but she was 
not in the hall. She had gone to see after the “treat ” 
which was being laid out in the breakfast-room, thence 
to be brought out and handed round at half -past nine. 
I stopped then, and hesitated. Only for a minute, 
though. Richard stood against the parlor door, and I 
met his eye, watching me with the old, kind gladness ; 
glad to see me bright and happy, I knew. 

I walked somewhat slowly over toward him ; I 
could not help so far signifying him; but I was not 
quite sure even when I came to him, whether I would 
do more. I was only thirteen, and I thought no 
harm ; if I had been more used to home-caressing, I 
should have scarcely felt an awkwardness, for there 
had been plenty of merry kissing-penalties all through 
the game ; I paused and looked up at him, and he bent 
his head down, — then I reached up to him and just 
touched his cheek. He did not kiss me back; indeed, 
I did not give him time ; there was a flush in his face 
as he raised it again, and I was afraid, for a second, 
that he did not like what I had done ; but he kept 
hold of my hand which he had taken, and drew me to 
a place beside him against the wall ; and I saw in his 


JASPER, 


65 


eyes and about his lips the look that I never saw in 
any man’s face but Richard Hathaway’s, — a look that 
he had when he was moved, — a sort of large, tender 
shining from under lids a little lifted, and a curve of 
the mouth that went with that, betraying a heart-stir 
hidden and quiet, but very strong. He looked like 
that sometimes when his mother praised him, or when 
he heard of some grand happening or doing; or if any 
soul, or any creature, showed a love or gratitude for 
him when he had given a help or soothed a pain. I 
have seen him look like that upon a little child, too 
small to speak, that stretched its arms to him; I have 
seen him look like that upon a sick woman to whose 
side he had come, tenderly; it was a spirit great to 
very gentleness that so revealed itself ; they were mo- 
ments when he showed noblest. If I could have 
thought of him so always, in those years that came on 
after! But he was silent; homely in his ordinary 
ways ; content with simple, common things ; and I was 
full of dreams. 

I think Mrs. Hathaway always liked Lucy Kilham. 
I noticed that night how she spoke to her in a differ- 
ent way, kind as she was, from her kindness to any- 
body else ; and how she looked at Richard and at her 
when it was Richard’s turn to redeem a forfeit by and 
by, and he had to do the same thing that I had done. 
He knelt to Lucy, of course; everybody did; I won- 
dered if Mrs. Hathaway thought of anything else ; and 
then he went and gave the kiss to his mother. I 
thought she looked somehow as if she only took it to 
keep safely for a while. 

I felt how nice it was to be pretty, like Lucy. I 
would rather, I thought, have had a face like hers than 
anything else in the world. There are many different 
types of women’s beauty; I had not learned then to 
read or to discern them all; and Lucy Kilham ’s was 


66 


HITHERTO. 


at that time, and for years, my ideal. It was of the 
same, and yet not really at all like Augusta Hare’s. 
Augusta’s was more conscious, and animated, and 
coquettish; she knew better how to show off her gift. 
Lucy just was pretty. Wherever she stood or sat, 
there was the light of the room; to my thought, she 
was the party ; the rest were only the people. Her 
brown hair,, lying in a soft curve along the fair, broad 
brow and temples, and tucked off carelessly over the 
small ear; her large, gray-hazel eyes with the dark 
lashes and the straight, slender penciling above them; 
the little dimpled knitting of the forehead that was 
a habit, and gave her a sort of tender, half-troubled 
look ; the straight, delicate nose ; the mouth, so per- 
fectly imprinted and so sweetly set, its corners tucking 
themselves away in dimples when she smiled or spoke, 
and showing the little unobtrusive white teeth that 
met each other with such a charm of exactness and 
cosy closeness (Mrs. Hathaway said her mouth and 
chin were like nothing but a fresh-made butter-pat), — 
these made me look and follow her till I forgot I might 
be staring; they made me wonder, envyingly, how it 
would seem to look like that ; to brush that beautiful 
dark hair that could not go amiss over such a clear, 
lovely forehead, and to talk and laugh with such be- 
witching furnishings as hers. 

I can think now, just how I looked that night in the 
corner glass, when I went to undress in the press- 
chamber. I took especial notice, for I wanted to find 
out. What I did see, I know now, was a face pretty 
enough in its own way, though I slighted it so utterly 
in my opinion then, possessed with but one conception. 
Round, and flushed to a bright rosiness with excite- 
ment and fast-returning health; the eyes blue and in- 
tense from a fire within, and color that like the bloom 
of art heightened their effect; hair soft and shining. 


JASPEE. 


67 


tossed about to a light fullness out of the set lines in 
which it would not stay, — all this I saw, and only 
perceived that it was not a bit like the sweet regular- 
ity and wonderful fairness that had so captivated me. 
The nose turned up a little, and the mouth was too 
undefined. I tried to accomplish the little pucker 
between the brows that Lucy Kilham had; but my 
first essay at expression-practicing disheartened me. 
It didn’t suit with the rest; and besides that, I did n’t 
see how she made it stay. I came to the conclusion 
that I was frightfully ugly, and blew out my light and 
undressed in the dark. 

It was not for what beauty could do for me; I 
wanted nothing of it except itself; but everything was 
so common with me ! 

Well, after all, one could be but common, and yet 
have a bright, good time. I reconciled myself to that, 
made my dress especially trig and tidy, and went into 
the briskness and business of Thanksgiving preparation 
with my kind entertainer. 

We all sat and stoned raisins together, for two or 
three evenings beforehand; Mrs. Hathaway, Martha, 
Richard, and I. We each had a plate and a knitting- 
needle, and the two dishes of fruit, stoned and un- 
stoned, stood midway in the round table, accessible to 
all. 

Then there was citron again to slice; and lemon- 
peel to shave, and to cut into the minutest shreds with 
small, bright scissors. Richard shaved it, and I took 
the thin, curling, fragrant rings as they fell from his 
fingers, and snipped them up. 

How nice the things looked, all sorted out in the 
pantry ! I felt a little tender self-reproach, thinking 
of Aunt Ildy working all alone. She had been good 
to let me come; when I got back I would try and be 
a better girl. 


68 


HITHERTO. 


Richard’s married sister and her husband and chil- 
dren came that year all the way from Schenectady; 
and his brother John came home from somewhere be- 
yond in New York State. John was going to be mar- 
ried out there ; after this, his Thanksgivings would be 
divided, and rarer yet in Broadfields. 

I helped Mrs. Hathaway bring down the linen to be 
aired ; and I counted over the best napkins, and rubbed 
the silver ; I dusted the spare rooms, and laid out tow- 
els, and filled the pitchers. We did all this, and laid 
the table in the long sitting-room, the day before. 
The pies were baked, and plum-puddings ready, and 
all were ranged in goodly show upon the shelves ; and 
the whole hall, into which the pantry opened, was redo- 
lent with sweet, rich odors. “ Spicy breezes, ” Richard 
called them; and he went about singing the second 
verse of the Missionary Hymn. 

I myself had rolled out and filled the mince turn- 
overs for the children, and printed the edges with a 
little key. I felt so housewifely, and blithe ; I found 
that there were really many good things that one could 
do and be, if nothing especial had come to one in the 
way of a fair face or a rare fortune. I was here in 
the way of a true healthiness of living. 

Mrs. Kingsdon arrived, with Mr. Kingsdon and the 
children. I went upstairs with the little ones, and 
helped to put them to bed in the southwest room, where 
I had suffered my punishment last summer. There 
was a fire blazing there now, and the shutters were all 
fast closed. The shadows from the firelight danced 
over the ceiling, and the large white bed and the little 
trundle-bed were luminous with their fresh pillows and 
coverlets. 

I think a fire upstairs is such an especially pleasant 
thing. It is associated for me with rare indulgence; 
times of mild measles and moderate whooping-cough. 


JASPER. 


when my room was warmed and brightened so, and I 
lay in the twilights and the evenings with the cheer 
about me, feeling a sweet rest, and watching Lucretia 
as she would sit with her knitting- work in her rocking- 
chair by the hearth, casting a grotesque figure and 
motion all across the ceiling with her shadow as she 
vibrated to and fro, plying the slender implements that 
magnified to huge beams and battering-rams and made 
most awful threats and passes overhead. 

I shaped rabbits and sheep and foxes for the children 
with my fingers, and made them leap, and nibble, and 
snap great jaws upon the wall. I pretended to lose 
little saucy Jimmy, who squatted in his scrap of flan- 
nel shirt in the farthest corner, his pudsy hands upon 
his dimpled knees, and shrieked with laughter when I 
passed him by. They wanted “something put beside 
their beds, ” and I went downstairs and brought back 
small, round, sugared cakes that had been baked on 
purpose. They looked at them, and laid them down 
in perfect content and loftiest honor, not to be touched 
till they had truly been asleep, and they said their 
prayers, and tried to shut their little winking, wake- 
ful eyes, and keep them so. 

I left them then, as Mrs. Kingsdon had told me. 
In the morning, by daylight, she said, they were all 
astir, ^and nibbling like little mice. 

When I could no longer do anything for these little 
creatures, I stood aside, and half wished that I were 
hut one of them ; one of a family, with all the happy 
growing-up before me. Next to that, I would have 
liked to be their older sister. I was only thirteen, 
and it never occurred to me to think of motherhood 
to such; nevertheless, I believe that, even, may have 
been unconsciously in my heart. 

Afterward came quiet days by ourselves; and the 
time drew toward the end of my stay at Broadfields. 


70 


f 


HITHERTO. 


I remember the afternoons, when Mrs. Hathaway, in 
her brown merino gown, and white hohbinet necker- 
chief, with the large gold heads — the heirloom from 
mother to daughter in so many New England country 
families — around her throat, would sit by the little- 
room window with her knitting-work, or the weekly 
newspaper which she read in bits and over and over for 
secular literature; and the Sundays, when, in black 
silk and best cap, she would sit in the same place, and 
the reading would be a chapter or two in the great 
family Bible laid across her knees. She would give 
me at the same time a large-print Testament, and I 
would turn it over to my favorite places in Revelation, 
and read about the heavenly city. 

The little-room window looked to the east; Mrs. 
Hathaway’s room and the press-chamber were in the 
kitchen L, and on the western side. There was the 
early sun to breakfast in, and the last twilight to go 
to bed with, or to follow. It is a good and a cheery 
thing so to travel with the day. 

But I liked the looking out eastward for a while in 
the late afternoon light, also. There was the bare top 
of Red Hill right over against us, and it took its color 
from the gorgeousness opposite ; and the clouds above 
it were deeply crimson and tenderly pink before they 
settled into the evening gray. 

There was jasper on Red Hill, from which it had 
its name. I was asking Richard about it the last Sun- 
day evening before I went away. I had never seen 
any jasper ; and it seemed to me something wonderful 
that the stone, which is the lower foundation of the 
holy Jerusalem, should be found in fragments there, 
close by us, on Red Hill. I knew these words and 
names were emblems; still it gave me a feeling as if 
Red Hill must be mysteriously near to heaven. 

“I have a piece upstairs, polished,” Richard said, 


JASPEB. 


71 


when I had told him this; and he went and brought 
it for me. It was an irregular oval; smooth, flat on 
one side, and rising to a cone-like ridge upon the 
other; of a deep, rich red, made bright with the per- 
fect gloss to which it had been brought. I held it in 
my hands with pleasure. 

Presently, I turned to my Testament, and read 
over the stones aloud, naming their colors. I had 
found them out by asking, and by searching in a dic- 
tionary of minerals at school. I had thought them 
over and imaged them to myself till I knew them by 
heart, and, inwardly, by sight. 

“Jasper, crimson; sapphire, blue; chalcedony, 
pure, lustrous, waxy white ; emerald, deep, full green ; 
sardonyx, red sardius and white chalcedony in turn; 
sardius, blood-red ; chrysolite, clear, transparent 
green; beryl, pale blue; topaz, yellow; chrysoprase, 
bright leek-green; jacinth, purple; amethyst, violet.” 

“That is the way they go,” I said to Richard, in a 
child’s homely phrase, but feeling a great beauty as 
I spoke. “From this darkest, up through all others 
to violet, — just like the rainbow. What do colors 
mean, Richard ? In the beginning of the Bible is the 
rainbow; that is the covenant; and here at the end 
is the rainbow of precious stones ; the solid one ; the 
wall of the holy Jerusalem. And the gates are pearls, 
pure white.” 

“Nobody knows what it means,” said Richard. 

“But it does mean,” I persisted. “They wouldn’t 
be called by names of things we know if we weren’t 
to find out.” 

“It’s just a description; nobody understands it,” 
Richard repeated vaguely. 

“Don’t you care? ” I asked impatiently. 

“I care most for things that are plain and real; I 
think that ’s the best way,” he answered. “You may 


HITHERTO. 


n 

keep the jasper, Nansie; next summer we’ll go up 
Red Hill and get more.” 

I was disappointed in Richard. This was one of 
the ends at which he always stopped. He could help 
me so in common things; he could make everything 
so pleasant to me ; hut he would not help me think. 

I shut up the Testament, and turned away to the 
window, looking up at Red Hill; and I would not 
say any more. I forgot to thank him even, for the 
jasper. I dare say he was dissatisfied too, thinking 
me visionary and fantastic. He always seemed afraid 
of that for me. 

Mrs. Hathaway had taken off her spectacles while 
we talked, and sat looking over at us. She could see 
both our faces. 

“Oh, you foolish children!” she said, in a sort of 
loving, pitiful way, “One begins backwards, and the 
other does n’t begin at all, — by appointed means. 
The way to Revelation is all through Matthew and 
Mark, Luke and John. When you ’ve done all that, 
then you ’ll come to the jasper walls and the gates of 
pearl.” 

She was always anxious, religiously, about Richard; 
the more, I believe, because he was by nature so good 
already. She had been taught to believe that a sweet 
nature might even hinder grace. “To enter in by the 
door into the sheep-fold, ” — that, in her understand- 
ing of it, was what she always longed for in his be- 
half. 

I looked round, and Richard smiled. Something 
pleased, or amused him in his mother’s speech; her 
calling us both children alike, I think, when he was 
one and twenty, and I just entered into my teens. 

“Come, Nansie,” he said; “put on your rubbers 
and wraps, and we ’ll carry some milk to the kittens 
in the barn.” He never forgot a want that he could 


,TASPEE. 


n 

answer; and he was always nobly patient; I think, 
now, that these had something to do with Matthew 
and Mark, Luke and John, whether of a purpose or 
not. But I went with him that night, only half 
pleased. 

I wished so I could have somebody to talk to; to 
say my fancies out to, and have them reasoned into 
something — or nothing. I could not do it with Mrs. 
Hathaway; not upon these subjects; with her there 
was only one question to be asked, anxiously and first. 
Perhaps I was coming — being led — to it, though it 
were backward even. There is one Door; but they 
come from the East and the West, the North and the 
South, to sit down in the kingdom. 


CHAPTER VI. 


A THREAD BROUGHT UP. 

From farther back and away off. 

Up into New Hampshire, to a little human home 
upon first principles; to a very beginning of things we 
must come, to find the starting-point of that which 
grows to be an element, pretty soon, in these lives 
with which we have to do. 

It was under a wild hill, in a little red house, with 
no other near, — only a scrap of clearing in front, 
down to the river, where a bit of one-handed farming 
was done ; and a peep of far-off roofs between the dis- 
tant slopes of the long, deep valley. Here, once upon 
a time, there lived as happy a young couple as any in 
all the State. 

Nothing on earth to worry them; nothing to lose; 
little to want; everything in life to look for and 
to gain. Working up; beginning a long way down, 
but feeling the great joy of the beginning; strong 
and cheery, both of them ; their very pulses one with 
the great pulse of nature about them; something of 
the mountain and the river taken, day by day, into the 
spirit, and sent forth in act; they grew, as it were, 
to the color of their abode and nourishing, as a wood- 
pecker grows to the gray of a tree-trunk and the katy- 
did is brilliant with the green of the leafage. 

They came here out of the village together. George 
Devine had got the help of stalwart friends, and raised 
his house-frame; and with a job hired irregularly, 
now and again, had boarded it in and shingled it, 
mainly with his own hands. Persis wove her own 


A THUEAD BROUGHT UP. 


75 


sheets and pillow-cases; “hired out” for a winter, 
and bought a best gown and a new bonnet and a tea- 
/ set ; and they were married on a June day, and came 
home to pick wild strawberries on the hillside, and 
make a johnny-cake for supper; and to feel just as 
well off, and a great deal better able to take in the 
full content of it all, than if they had had a hundred 
weight of silver to bring with them and to be beholden 
to fashionable friends for, and a grand reception to 
give next week. 

The birds and the river serenaded them ; tame little 
red squirrels came and made morning calls upon them ; 
and in the twilights and on the Sundays friends walked 
up the wood-path between great oaks and beeches, — a 
grand approach, such as men, with monstrous outlay, 
make over again to their dwellings, where, with e^ual 
outlay, the old glory has been laid low; and the young 
men talked of their farms and their oxen, of training- 
days and elections ; and the women of their bedquilts 
and their butter, their new gowns and the village news ; 
some of them of their babies. 

All this was more than twenty years before. 

Summer and winter went by, and spring came, 
tender-footed, over the hills, and summer was near 
again. Something else was near. Something that 
made the young wife happy in the bright mornings, — 
the brave morning-times when soul and body wake to- 
gether, strong for whatever may be to do or to bear, 
— and fearful with a tremble and a foreboding, when 
the nights shut down, and cut them off with gloom 
and silence from the village two miles away. Nobody 
nearer than those two miles, — mother, doctor, or 
friend, — whatever might happen before daylight. 
Only a forest bridle and foot path between. 

“It will come all right,” said cheery George De- 
vine. 


76 


HITHERTO. 


Aiid one glad, sweet, perfumy morning, it did 
come right. George walked and ran the two miles in 
twenty minutes, got to the village at “ sun-up, ” and 
home again just as the golden light fell full from over 
the mountain-top, like a promise, upon his roof-tree; 
the country doctor followed on Crab, with his saddle- 
bags, close after ; and then the mother, never minding 
the two miles afoot, with all her fifty years and grow- 
ing comely weight. And into the small home came 
the pain and the peril and the joy that are the same in 
palace and cabin, and by equal chrism and crown make 
every woman, who so suffers and receives, a queen. 

They called the baby by a quaint old name in which 
their exultation spoke itself, — Rejoice. They never 
thought of anything but joy in her from that day on- 
ward^ when they named her so. In their love and 
gladness, they arrogated fate to their desire. 

All through that happy summer of her young mo- 
therhood, Persis did her small, neat housekeeping, 
with her baby in the cradle or upon her arm ; but 
when summer came again, George had to put a wooden 
slide across the door to shut the little one in from all 
the great, dangerous world, that began for her from 
just outside that threshold ; for the tiny feet had grown 
restless, and strong, and willful; and the bit, bright 
face looked over at him, and the wee hands clapped 
and beckoned when he came up from his work, and out 
on the doorstone he would stop, deferring his delight, 
to pick up spoon and rattle and clothes-pin and string 
of buttons, and the half-dozen other homely toys of 
which the busy mother had made temporary beguile- 
ments and that the child had flung away; and last of 
all would gather up his child, with a strong rapture, 
and hold her to his lips and heart. The old beautiful 
story of a babyhood, always, whatever comes of it 
afterward ! 


A THUUAD B BOUGHT UP. 


77 


“ By and by, — when she can run and meet me ! ” 
he would say. 

“By and by, — when she can play on the flat rock, 
and set out acorn-cups and bits of moss, and keep a 
little house, as I did once ! ” 

“And when the farm grows, and I stay in the fields 
all day, and she can come and bring my dinner to 
me ! ” 

“She will have the young girls from the village, 
one of these days, to walk in the pine woods, and get 
flowers and berries, and come home to tea.” 

“She will have a sweetheart, maybe, to walk and 
talk there with her, as I walked and talked with you. ” 

Persis would stop there; the mother does not go 
beyond this, with her “by and by.” 

And as yet the child was just their little, bright 
Rejoice ; and the future was all hid. 

Ten or twelve years went by; and there was no 
other little one; indeed, the mother said that this was 
well. They called her Joyce, now; names get short- 
ened so ; and somehow they grew sad when they re- 
membered how they had first christened her. 

She gave them trouble; they no longer said “by 
and by.” The father looked in the mother’s anxious 
face when he came in, to read what new pain the will- 
ful, wayward little girl had given ; and they lay awake 
and talked at nights of what they should do to rule 
and win her. For she was of a strange temper, that 
would neither be ruled nor won; passionate, discon- 
tented, headstrong ; heedless of duty and of love ; bent 
only upon selfish end and pleasure. She opened 
great, saucy eyes when her father reasoned, or her 
mother pleaded; she defied restriction, bore punish- 
ment doggedly, and reiterated offense. Idle and wild, 
she gathered about her, instead of the sweet young 
companionship her mother had pictured, the truants 


78 


HITHERTO. 


and the ne’er-do-weels of the village; she would escape 
and be off with them whole long mornings. Persis 
Devine’s heart ached when she thought, now, of the 
by and by. God’s by and by is long; that is the only 
comfort. 

At fourteen Joyce ran away, with a girl four years 
her elder. Bewitched with stories of factory life, tired 
of her quiet home, she made up a bundle of her clothes, 
took a little money, and went off, down to where mills 
were building and cotton spinning, on the Merrimac. 
George Devine went after her, and brought her back. 
It was only a fruitless, ill-conceived, child’s attempt; 
but it half broke the hearts that had so built upon 
her. 

In the midst of all this trouble, came to them — 
a strange, late gift — another little one. Pure, and 
sweet, and lovely, as the first had been; to grow, per- 
haps, — God knew whether, — into another pain for 
them. 

“ He could not let it be so, ” the poor mother said ; 
and trembling inwardly, pleading and praying, assum- 
ing nothing now, she called it Hope. 

When Hope was three years old, the father died. 

Then Joyce could not be restrained. She must earn 
money now, she said; and indeed there was need of 
it; so she went down to the mills. She cried when 
she said good-by at last, holding her little sister in her 
arms. The one tenderness in her nature had awakened 
for her. In these three years she had seemed to soften 
somewhat, and at times to be even steady and thought- 
ful; there was a chance yet, Persis thought; so with 
good, motherly counsel, and kisses and prayers, she 
let her go. 

From the mills, Joyce went to the great city be- 
yond ; to learn a trade, she said, and make her fortune. 
She came home now and then, wearing fine clothes: a 


A THBEAD BROUGHT UP. 


79 


bonnet with French flowers ; a silk dress and an em- 
broidered shawl ; and she gave her mother money. She 
should have Hope with her, by and by, she said; she 
petted the child, and brought her pretty keepsakes. 

When Hope was seven, the neighbors sent for J oyce ; 
the mother was ill of a fever; Joyce hardly got there 
for the end. And then the two were orphans. 

The neighbors could not interfere; but they hardly 
liked theTook of the thing, when Joyce took Hope and 
went away. Something coarser in the girl’s face; 
something meaner even in the dress, mixed yet with a 
tawdry smartness, as she had come among them (she 
had put on a black bonnet, and a black shawl and gown 
of her mother’s now, to go back in), — indicated, even 
to these unsophisticated country-folk, a step downward, 
somehow; they were “afraid she was n’t making out 
so terrible well, after all.” 

And then there came a gap which it needs not to 
fill up ; a changing and wandering of these two, from 
place to place, still hand in hand; for, erring and 
unfit as she was, Joyce loved the child, and Hope was 
innocent and trusting. 

Joyce’s face grew coarse; she was “queer” and ill, 
now and then; when these times came, Hope just 
stayed by and waited. 

“Whiles,” as the Scotch say, they would go to- 
gether into service; Joyce was capable, and would 
work well for a space ; and Hope was bright and quick 
for errands and small chores. 

Then they would live in some bit of a room together, 
“housekeeping,” — Joyce getting work at her trade, 
in a shop; they had strange neighbors and strange 
company, often, and Joyce went and came at extraor- 
dinary hours ; but she was kind and loving to the little 
sister, — careful of her, in a certain fashion, amid all 
her recklessness ; that and her young childhood and her 


80 


HITHERTO. 


simpleness, and some peculiar inherent quality of her 
own little life, hard to define or account for, but now 
and then to be discerned in a heaven-sunned nature 
like hers, saved Hope. vShe was like a pure little blos- 
som that lifts its delicate head sometimes, out of a 
handful of sweet, natural earth, kept by some blind 
love or instinct in the midst of grimness and foulness, 
and all that shrouds and shuts out nature. 

That does not tell it either. A shaft of divine light 
ran athwart and through this child’s spiritual being, 
that lit up itself and the air about it; that even illu- 
mined the motes therein that were really of the dust 
and refuse, and turned them into starry sparkles. She * 
made her own little bright spot at once; she made 
friends who turned toward her the side that was capa- 
ble of ripening to any sweetness, even among the very 
castaways with whom her wretched outer living brought 
her in innocent and unsuspicious contact. She was 
never frightened, never lonely; she sang little nursery 
songs to herself by hours, when Joyce left her; when 
a change came, — as always did come to whatever 
temporary plan or abiding they might make, — through 
a fit of temper, or a whim, or the “queerness ” on the 
one hand, or an impulse to better things, as it might 
be, on the other, with poor Joyce, — she set off blithe 
and trusting again ; always looking for the good that 
they were surely going to; seeking the fortune that 
infallibly lay beyond. 

She told Joyce stories, in her cunning little way; 
half of memory, half of her own sweet, childish fancy, 
about sisters like them who went out into the wide 
world and came to wonderful luck. She mixed up the 
little she had been taught about God’s providence with 
this ; and it was “ the good God ” who was to bring 
them out of every perplexity and lead them to the 
beautiful end. This force of an opposite drawing it 


A TBREAD BROUGHT UR. 


81 

was that persuaded Joyce’s vibrating life to its better 
extreme ; that attracted her to a quiet and respectable 
living; that brought her sometimes, and so Hope, into 
a purer atmosphere. Out of this Hope gathered, by 
angelic assimilation, the good and the brightness and 
the fragmentary truth which she carried into the darker 
alternations ; as if the day might treasure up and se- 
crete particles of its sunlight against the turning away 
toward the sunless void. 

She asked her sister once what her name meant. 
She understood her own and it was beautiful. “Joyce ” 
must mean something. 

“I lost the beginning of my name, long ago,” Joyce 
answered bitterly. “When I was little, they called 
me Rejoice. It will never be put together again. 
Never call me so! ” she added, with an almost angry 
impetuosity. 

“ God could put it together, ” said Hope confidently. 
“ I shall call you ‘ Re, ’ to save the two halves, and 
keep Him in mind.” 

So, after that, she always did. 

But poor Joyce’s name and life were alike in two 
distracted halves. And for two years more it went on 
so, till Hope was nine. Then — they had been in the 
furthest gloom for months — the end came. 

A pitiful sight in a city street one day — far off, 
as they measured distance then, from the scene of 
Joyce Devine’s first venture after fortune — gathered 
a gradual crowd. 

A woman sitting on the damp sidewalk, leaning hack 
in a sheltering angle of the brick wall; a pale, dis- 
torted face, that ought to have been young, hut that 
never would be young again; swollen, changed, from 
what it must have been a little while ago, — stupid, 
senseless ; the eyes half shut, the jaw falling ; an old 
bonnet crushed down upon the forehead ; a thin, torn, 


82 


HITHEBTO. 


dirty calico gown, and a miserable shawl that hid and 
helped nothing; feet thrust out, unsightly, in broken 
and downtrodden shoes. Beside this, a little girl 
standing waiting. No surprise, no perplexity even, 
in her face ; only a patient look that was hardly sad, 
rather sure and expectant, though a little weary, — a 
something through the patience which said it would be 
better with them soon, — she had only to wait. 

She moved before the other a little, when people 
came by, and glanced and lingered; she drew the old 
shawl over her sister’s bosom when the wind, or some 
half- conscious motion, stirred it; she said, “It was 
no matter, — Joyce was queer like that sometimes,” 
when any one questioned; but all the while Joyce 
grew strangely queerer. 

There was no omnipresent police in those days; a 
good many persons, one after another, half paused, 
and then went on, none of them being that “some- 
body ” who is always to take care, at last, of that 
which does not eventually take care of itself ; but pres- 
ently they would no longer go by; they stopped and 
gathered; they said the constable must be sent for, 
and she must be carried somewhere. 

“Please let her be,” Hope said, “she will be better 
by and by, and we will go home.” 

She stood with her hand on Joyce’s shoulder; the 
other arm held across her breast, keeping the old shawl 
on ; somehow no one liked to meddle forcibly, or take 
the child away; there was an impalpable shield of 
privacy about her as she stood there in her patient 
trouble in the open street, as if close walls and shut- 
tered windows had covered her in ; she looked so sur- 
prised that any should persistently intrude; it was her 
business, and she knew so well. 

But Joyce grew queerer, — paler; the slight occa- 
sional movements ceased; there was no longer the ex- 


A THBEAD BROUGHT UP. 83 

piration of slow, audible breath; she lay very still, 
and the head fell farther forward. 

A man, just come up, pressed through the crowd, 
and got a single look; then he laid his hand upon her 
bonnet and lifted it away. 

“ Let her be, ” said Hope, reiterating her old words 
in a tired way, “she will be better soon.” 

“She is better,” said the man. “She is just 
dead! ” 

Hope looked at him as if she could not comprehend 
either the fact, or how he dared to utter it. “Dead ? ” 
she repeated, as if she spoke after him a word in some 
strange language. 

“She is dead; of heart disease and — inebriation.” 

He was a doctor, and he could read the signs; but 
he looked in that child’s pure, amazed face, and he 
could not use a harsher, commoner word. 

This, then, was the end of it all; of the young 
wife’s fears and gladness; of the home-building and 
the looking-for, the pain, and the joy, and the pride; 
of the sister - love and the fortune - seeking together. 
This was the whole history and outcome of it. 

Was it? 

There is never an end ; it is always a going on ; and 
God’s mercy is beyond, always. In the infinitude of 
that, Joyce may have found, somewhere, before now, 
the old, lost syllable of her name. 

Meanwhile, there was at that moment only this, 
the seeming end; the dead girl in the streets; the 
gathering crowd ; the doctor ; presently- the coroner, 
the bearing away, the inquest; and little Hope left 
alone in the world. 


CHAPTER VIT. 

ONE OF THESE DAYS. 

There were two places in the city, to one of which 
Hope would have to he taken, — the almshouse, or 
a more special charity, the Female House of Industry, 
and Asylum for the Indigent. It was to this latter, 
and to the former division of it, that she was brought. 

They put on her a dark blue gown and a brown 
linen apron, and merged her in the routine and duty of 
the establishment. They told her God had taken her 
sister, and that this was to be her home. They were 
kind to her; I have no tale of horrors to relate. Only 
it was routine and rule, and keeping to hours and 
work. 

She grieved, in a tender way, for Joyce; but she 
had great faith, in her small, unlearned fashion. God 
had taken her; she gave her up to Him. She could 
wait ; she had waited a great many times before. God 
would take her, some time, too. 

There was a school for the children in this House 
of Industry; three hours for simple lessons in reading, 
writing, and numbers; some of the oldest ones studied 
geography. After that, they did, in different depart- 
ments, various small, tedious work; all sameness of 
work is tedious to children. They picked hair for 
mattresses, which the women made over or made up ; 
they sewed patchwork for quilts ; they hemmed towels ; 
they braided mats; they went into the laundry and 
learned to do ruffles on ruffling irons, or they turned 
crimping machines. They had half-hours, at different 
times in the day, for play. 


ONE OF THESE DAYS. 


85 


Next door to the asylum was a building in which 
was also a children’s school; the yard in which these 
children played was divided by a high fence from the 
other. From the windows in the passages above, the 
little charity-folks, in their straight blue gowns and 
Holland aprons, could look over upon these groups of 
little ones who came from homes ; who had an indi- 
viduality, and wore, some of them, dresses of blue, 
some of pink, some of green or white. 

.Hope watched their games and caught the clue to 
them; then she and her companions repeated them in 
the asylum yard. Children’s pleasures are made up 
of a thousand little imaginations and interpretings that 
are incomprehensible to their elders, except as they 
look back on their own childhood ; and this some of 
us have either not the power to do, or have lost the 
habit. There is such a thing as a genius for retro- 
spection. If it were not for such intangible and per- 
haps absurd imaginings and associations, where would 
be the charm of nine tenths of the children’s games! 
They are types and suggestions to them of great, un- 
conscious meanings. In the after years we unravel 
some of these which were vaguely beautiful in their 
time, if so be, indeed, we have that retrospective 
genius which can call them up in their vividness, and 
the insight that can analyze. 

They played at “ Bookbinder ; ” where the sport con- 
sisted in successive trials of watchfulness and agility, 
by the placing of a book upon the closed and joined 
fists, manipulating about it with touches and ap- 
proaches and feints of lifting, the end of which was, if 
it could be accomplished, a smart rap upon the knuckles 
too slow in withdrawing, or the fall of the book to the 
ground, which was just as bad. Between this little 
Scylla and Charybdis each child watched and waited 
eagerly, with alert, sparkling eyes; every failure sent 


86 


HITHEBTO. 


the defeated one down to the foot of the line; she 
who held her place at the head for three rounds became 
Bookbinder. 

There was great glee in the asylum yard the day this 
new game, borrowed from their neighbors, was inaugu- 
rated. Hope showed them how it was done, as usual ; 
they played with a small, square bit of smooth board, 
left by some carpenter, and treasured up as a plaything ; 
they could not carry books away from the schoolroom. 
It was a grand excitement ; fun, they knew not why ; 
the truth was, that to their child-natures and ambitions 
it was all that the most earnest strivings are to men 
and women; when life tries them with its ticklish op- 
portunities ; when they watch and balance, and, seizing 
the right moment, may, by vigilance and quickness, 
succeed; or too fearful, or too slow, may let fall 
everything, or get their knuckles rapped, and go down, 
disappointed, to the foot. If they can go up and stay 
up, after a while they begin to dispense chances and 
hold fates for others. It is only a bigger game that 
goes round so; we are just like the children; by our 
games, also, we are training faculties for the grasp of 
things yet more large and real, that we shall come to 
by and by. 

Then there was one other chief amusement. In 
these bricked yards were wide borders, marked off by 
planks set edgewise, holding garden earth, in which 
grew shrubs and common flowers. The children tried 
in turn walking this narrow plank-edge from end to 
end. According to the distances they achieved with- 
out a slipping, they would rank themselves, keeping 
their place and number from day to day. There were 
differences in these wooden curbs; some were inch- 
wide only, some gave double that for foothold ; so they 
had classes higher and lower; being promoted from 
the head of one to the foot of another. What was 


ONE OF THESE BAYS. 


87 

this like but moral and intellectual mounting? What 
was it more like than some holy parable or promise, 
even, — of narrow ways that lead to higher life, of 
small work well done, after which shall be given 
greater? We live in allegory; the very children in 
the market-place utter the truth hidden away in them ; 
they believe they are at play only; but they can only 
play after the great human nature and expectation 
that lie latent and must urge outward. 

So it does not take much, after all, of implement 
and form to make a life ; an alphabet holds a whole 
language, and all the books of it; so there was not 
very much difference between the little girls in their 
blue gowns, and the children in coats of many colors; 
not much contrast between the going in to eat beans 
or porridge and unbuttered bread, and home to roasted 
chicken, — so that all was good of its kind, and they 
all got enough of it ; not much contrast between the 
patchwork sewing in the matron’s room, and the small 
stints in the nursery. By and up out of it all came 
the little souls into some larger hope and knowledge, 
some faint signifying to themselves of things we all 
grope after but dimly. The great facts of our living, 
and not the signs of it, are what matter; we may 
solve mathematical problems with chalk and a board; 
a poor woman may strive up toward order and beauty 
in her plain home, with only tin pans and rag-carpets 
to work with, instead of statuary and velvet; a small 
seller of tapes and buttons in a village may learn the 
laws of demand and supply which widen to the grand 
economy of a universe; we shall discover some time 
what we really have been studying, and we may come 
out more equal than we think. 

Out of their few books, in like manner, these char- 
ity-children made as much, perhaps, as they could 
have done from profounder ones and more of them; 


88 


HITHERTO. 


what was not there they put in; this is what we all 
have to do. They learned to read and spell from the 
old lesson-books which told them things like these : “ I 
am the sun. I am very bright. I rise every morn- 
ing, and give light and heat to the world. I make 
the grass grow and the flowers bloom. If it were not 
for me, all things would die.” am the moon. 

My face is round. I shine at night when the sun is 
gone. You cannot look at the sun, because he is too 
bright, but you can look at me, for my light is mild. ” 
Here and there a story, — of a disobedient rabbit who 
went into the field which his mother had forbidden 
him, thinking to eat fine parsley, but got poisonous 
hemlock instead; or an ^sop’s Fable; or some simple 
rhymes. These were to them the sublimity and full- 
ness of description (they brought the things them- 
selves to their thought, and what can sublimity and 
fullness do more ?) ; they were romance and tragedy, 
eclogue and epic. In these books they passed by no- 
thing; not even the homely scrolls and devices which 
divided the sections and subjects; they made them 
over on their slates ; a line — a curve — was a whole 
picture ; everything meant something, only they could 
have scarcely told you what. No more can you tell 
what it is that you read in the swell of a hill against 
the horizon, or the bend of a shore along the sea. 

Hope read in “Barbauld’s Lessons;” that is all 
Addison and Waver ley for a child, as “Mother 
Goose ” is Shakespeare. She soon got out of that as 
a lesson-book, and she could enter, in her way, into 
far larger things when she got hold of them ; simpli- 
city and scope go strangely together with the young. 
She did not stagger at “ Paradise Lost, ” — you shall 
hear, presently, how she came by that, — but she 
never tired of the story of Charles, and his morning 
walk down the fields, and his stepping on board a ves- 


ONE OF THESE DAYS. 


89 


sel, in a truly spiritual way, without premeditation or 
incumberment, and sailing over to France, and just 
strolling down through that country. France was 
only next door; one could put on one’s cape-bonnet 
and drop in there. One place opened to another, in 
that way, to her fancy; everything was next door; 
the world was la^ge, but you could go on and on; all 
ways led somewhere, and there was no knowing what 
pleasantness you might come to. 

She had a basket or a bundle of clean linen, done 
in the laundry, to carry home sometimes ; the trustiest 
children did the errands of the house. Hope always 
found the place, and she was not gone too long; yet 
she chose her ways of going, for all that. 

The fine streets were near the river; it was in this 
direction, and up the town, that she was ordinarily 
sent ; so she could come a long way homeward, often, 
following the water- side. She delighted in making 
out new turns ; it was like going journeys to traverse 
different squares, or take a new cross-street, and come 
out at fresh points. But the water was the unfailing 
charm; something came to her, when she caught its 
sparkle, of the old dim pictures of her infancy when 
she lived in the little forest home. There was the 
wonder of whence it came and where it was going; 
where the vessels went that she saw sail up and down ; 
which was France, and which New Hampshire, — for 
she had not regularly begun geography yet, and the 
most she knew was by Barbauld and tradition. There 
were wide openings between the scattered buildings on 
that side and the blue river edge; over across were 
long, green, sloping hills. At one place, from a 
broad wooden wharf, a little ferry-boat plied to and 
fro; she wanted so to get in and go over in it, and 
climb up on the opposite shore to the crest of the high 
land, and see what there was beyond. She would run 


90 


HITHEETO. 


all the way to do her errand and to get back here, that 
she might have a little while to linger. One day she 
had leave for Barbara Graice to go with her. The 
scrupulous division of labor in this establishment sel- 
dom permitted two to be sent upon one errand. But 
Barbara ought to learn the way about; Hope could 
not always go ; also Hope was a good and trustworthy 
child, and deserved an indulgence. So the matron 
said yes ; and hand in hand, as happy as two little 
royal highnesses, the two little pauper-orphans set forth 
together. 

Hope liked Barbara because she was quiet, and 
would listen; and Hope always had so much to tell! 
They read stories together in their play-hours some- 
times; stories that Barbara Graice would never have 
sat down to read by herself, — she would rather have 
played at tag, the good of which was more apparent ; 
but with Hope’s elocution and commentaries and en- 
largements they became enchanting. 

Some good soul among the lady managers had given 
the blue-gowned children a year’s volume of the “Ju- 
venile Miscellany.” Very good girls were allowed 
to take it of a Saturday afternoon. Hope worked 
grandly at her small, tedious tasks, and earned the re- 
ward often ; sometimes for an extra half-hour that was 
not on a Saturday. Then she would find Barbara, and 
go and sit with her at the staircase window that over- 
looked the school-yard next door, and was crossed 
diagonally by the ascending steps, so that you had 
seat, and table, and footstool, if you wanted them, all 
at once, and the pleasant outlook besides. 

They had in this volume the exciting history of 
“Catharine Bennet; or. The Week’s Probation.” 
Also, “Susan’s Visit to the Country; ” how Catharine 
lost and kept her temper, and what befell and tempted 
her from day to day; how she did not go to the party, 


ONE OF THESE DAYS. 


91 


but did go at last to stay at her aunt’s instead, where 
there was a “ lawn ” — whatever that was, — and a 
pond; how Susan traveled in the stage-coach, and fed 
the chickens, and went to church, and carried a green 
parasol; these suggested worlds for the imagination to 
revel in; and Hope could tell Barbara Graice a score 
of things more than were put down in the book. 

“Catharine had brown, curly hair, like that pretty 
girl that comes to the school to fetch her little sister; 
and she wore a dark red gown like hers, and a white 
ruffle in her neck; and there was one little chicken at 
Susan’s grandmother’s that had a speckled breast and 
a white tail.” 

“ How do you know ? ” says Barbara. 

“Why, I just think hard, and then I see ’em. 
Shut your eyes and try.” 

Then Barbara would shut her eyes, and see — ex- 
actly nothing. 

“I ’ll ask Miss Hammond to let you go up to 
Tower Street with me to-morrow, with Mrs. Jameson’s 
basket, and coming home I ’ll show you the country.” 

“Shall I have to shut my eyes? Because I can^t 
see anything so, and I don’t see how you do it.” 

“No. It ’s outside, and close by, almost. The 
other things are inside, you know, and a great way off, 
somehow. ” 

This was the way that it came about, and that they 
walked up to Tower Street hand in hand, and came 
back along the river. 

It was a bright day, and the light sparkled on the 
little blue tips of the waves, and behind the green 
hills opposite, and overhead the sky was deep, and 
clear, and splendid. 

“ That ’s the country, ” says Hope, in a magnificent 
way, as if she were showing some grand domain of her 
own, or a continent that she had discovered, — “the 
real country.” 


92 


UlTHEBTO. 


“ Where Susan went ? ” 

“Yes, only she went up a long road behind those 
hills, that leads away off, up and down, and over 
bridges, and past fields and ponds, and through dark 
woods, till at last you come to it, — a great white 
house with a green fence before it, and a swing in the 
garden; and Susan’s grandmother has got a rosebush 
in the window.” 

“You never told me that before.” 

“I just noticed it,” says Hope. “You can’t see 
everything at once. There ’s ever so much more 
there, and in other places. Barbara! ” she began 
again suddenly, after a pause, “there ’s a story about 
us, too, somewhere.” 

“Oh, Hope, that ’s an awful — jiggermaree! ” She 
would n’t say “fib ” to Hope. 

“No, it ain’t. Maybe it is n’t put in a book yet; 
but there is a story; and somebody can shut up their 
eyes, somewhere, and see it, I know I ” 

“Stories ain’t true things. Miss Hammond says 
so. And when you shut your eyes you ain’t really 
there ! ” 

“You can’t see anything that ” says Hope 

positively. “And whatever there is, somebody will 
see. Up in heaven, at any rate.” 

“I ’d lieveser they wouldn’t be shutting their eyes 
and peeking at me. And I don’t believe it. It ’s 
only a pretend. ” 

“You can’t pretend what there isnHf” Hope per- 
sisted. 

A schooner, with sails white in the sunlight, came 
floating up before the gentle, steady breeze from the 
south, just outside the edge of the swift, downward 
river current, closer and closer, till they could hear 
the captain’s voice, ordering his crew of three men and 
a boy, and the rattle of the ropes, and the flap of the 


ONE OF THESE DAYS. 


canvas, as they began to shorten sail and wear in 
toward the shore. 

Right toward the wharf-head upon which they stood 
she came. This had never happened before when 
Hope had been here. She was quite awed to see it. 
That a vessel, straight from she knew not where, — 
France, perhaps, as likely as not, — and going, by 
and by, maybe, up where the water first gleamed in 
sight under a distant hill-foot, and still up, into the 
forests and past the towns, like one of her own dreams, 
that started from what she knew, and drifted far into 
the beautiful and rich unseen out of which all know- 
ledges came, — it made her catch her breath, and hold 
Barbara’s hand hard, and look with great eyes filled 
with wonder. 

Somebody, whose business it was, seeing the craft 
approach, ran down the wharf, and warned the chil- 
dren out of the way; a great rope was flung from the 
vessel’s bow and fell upon the pier; this man caught 
it, passed it quickly round an oak post that stood 
there, solid and shiny, and made it fast. The men 
on board took hold, and began to warp in; and pres- 
ently the hills opposite were cut up into little separate 
pictures between the masts and yards and the great, 
wrinkled rolls of sails furled up to these, and the 
slender tips of the topmost spars made delicate lines 
above the highest swell of the green land, against the 
deep, clear blue. 

Only two idle children, who had no business there, 
hanging round to watch a river schooner come up to 
her mooring-place ; but one of these, at least, was get- 
ting glimmerings of strange, untold intuitions that 
had to do with the great intercourse between far lands ; 
with all swift, sure, and beautiful messengerings ; 
dimly and unaware, with a communing yet more mys- 
tical and interior; a moving and reaching through 


94 


HITHERTO. 


some medium rarer than fluent wave or viewless air, 
of real, white-pinioned thoughts, driven of the heav- 
enly forces back and forth, making the joyful com- 
merce of the spheres. Some eyes are so anointed 
from the birth; anointed to the gradual seeing; men 
as trees walking, at the first ; but the feeling of some 
full, possible vision is upon them; hints of what all 
things show make all things wonderful. A little char- 
ity-girl in a blue gown ; ignorant ; all the toil of the 
world’s mechanism of learning before her; but a soul, 
nevertheless, touched with a spark of God’s own light, 
by which she caught continually that which lies behind 
all words. 

A woman and a little child were on the deck ; they 
came up out of the cabin just as the rope was flung; 
the child’s face was rosy and shining from fresh soap 
and water, and her hair was damp, and curled up 
round her temples where the comb had been drawn 
through. The woman had put on her shawl and bon- 
net, — they were the captain’s wife and little daughter, 
— presently they were going ashore. 

“Oh, see! ” said Hope. “She has come in the ves- 
sel. She belongs there.” 

A plank had been thrown from the vessel’s side to 
the wharf, and up this the captain, a young, brown, 
hearty fellow, came springing, as Hope spoke. 

The little child, with the damp, curling hair, had 
taught him to be “noticing of children,” as his wife 
said; and when he saw Hope’s eager face, he paused. 

“You’d like to go on board, maybe?” he said 
kindly. “Antoinette! I shan’t be ready for ten min- 
utes to go down town with you. See to these little 
folks, will you, if they want to look about ! ” 

Hope wondered, at first, if he could be speaking to 
his vessel; for she had spelled out “Antoinette” upon 
her bows. But it was his wife, for whom his vessel 


ONE OF THESE DAYS. 


95 

was named ; and she was already smiling, and the cap- 
tain’s hand was held out to Hope to help her down the 
plank if she would go. “You needn’t be afraid,” he 
said. 

But it was something else that hindered honest 
Hope. 

“I thank you, sir, but I guess I oughtn’t,” she 
replied. “It ’s time for me to go back now, and I’ve 
been trusted to take Barbara Graice.” 

“I guess you always will be trusted,” cried John 
Drake, the captain, looking into her straight, clear 
eyes. “Where do you live? ” 

“ House of Industry, and Asylum for the Indigent, ” 
repeated Hope. “I ain’t the Indigent; that’s the 
old ladies. I go errands. That ’s how I came 
here.” 

“Maybe you’ll go an errand again — this way. 
Antoinette and I will be here till to-morrow night.” 
She did not know, now, whether he meant Mrs. Drake 
or the schooner, and it seemed to make very little 
difference. 

“I’ll ask leave,” said Hope. “I don’t suppose I 
ought, without.” And so, with her head over her 
shoulder, with a longing, backward look, but a great 
determination in all the rest of her, she took Barbara 
Graice by the hand and turned away; walking fast 
up the wharf, and breaking to a run when she had 
turned the corner upon the street. 

“That was pretty hard,” she said, checking her 
speed, and drawing a long breath, when they had run 
two or three squares. 

“What? ” said Barbara. 

“Coming away. If he ’d coaxed me a little bit, 
I ’m afraid I shouldn’t.” 

“Coaxed? To go down that steep plank, over the 
water ? I would n’t have gone — for a fourpence ! ” 


96 


HITHERTO. 


Hope was half glad to hear that. To-morrow, if 
there was a basket, and Barbara wouldn’t want to 
come too, she might get leave. 

She made three squares of patchwork that afternoon, 
and when she carried them to Miss Hammond she pre- 
sented her request. 

Miss Hammond was dubious. 

HojDe lifted her clear eyes up at her; golden-brown 
eyes she had, almost translucent in their sunshiny 
color; it was like looking into a forest brook where it 
comes out from under the shadow into pure day, to 
read them. 

“I’ll be proper careful,” she said; ^ “and I won’t 
stay long. There was a kind lady, the captain’s wife, 
and his little girl. Oh, Miss Hammond, please ! He 
told her to see to me.” 

Miss Hammond knew that, if she chose, the child 
might have done the thing without the asking. She 
reasoned from this truth that it must all be as she 
said. She knew the place; it was above the busy 
wharves where the rush of city trade came in; it was 
one of those up-river schooners that picked up their 
freight from place to place as they came down, and 
discharged their return lading in like manner. She 
was wise, and trusted Hope. 

“After school, at eleven o’clock, you can carry a 
basket up to Mrs. Gilspey’s. And I ’ll give you till 
the clock strikes twelve. When you hear that, you 
must start for home. And you needn’t say anything 
about it either, among the other children, ” she added. 

“I will, ma’am, certain true. And I won’t; not 
a single, identical word.” 

Hope plumed herself upon no favor or importance; 
she simply saw, as Miss Hammond herself did, that it 
would hardly do to make a precedent; not that she 
ever heard the word ; but, as has been said, she was 


ONE OF THESE DAYS. 


97 


quick at seeing things. Words are made after these. 
She knew them when she came to them, by an instinct. 
They fitted exactly to something she had already got. 

The next day, when she reached the pier, Antoi- 
nette was there and “Theress, ” the child, but John 
Drake had gone into the town to attend to his business. 
Antoinette came up the gang-plank to meet the little 
visitor and help her on board; Theress jumped up and 
down upon the deck, and clapped her hands to see her 
coming. They told each other their names first, Hope 
and Theress, — - that was the way they pronounced this 
last, — and then they went all over the vessel. 

Theress showed Hope the little blue chest — a real 
sailor’s chest — which was her own, and in which she 
kept all her clothes ; this had a till inside, which held 
her especial treasures, — a paper box, with cotton- 
wool, on which lay a bit of cut purple glass, and a 
few dozen little scarlet guinea-peas with black eyes; 
little miracles of beauty they seemed to Hope, and 
when Theress gave her four of them for her own it 
was as if the Queen of England had sent her the Koh- 
i-noor; there would have been room for no higher 
ecstasy or gratitude in her at that. Also, there was 
in a tiny blue hat-box a real little black beaver hat, 
about two inches high, made by Theress’ cousin, who 
was a journeyman hatter in New York. 

“Do you live here all the time? ” asked Hope. 

“All the summer-times,” said Theress. “We 
don’t keep house; we keep schooner. It’s cheaper 
living; and it’s real fun,” she went on, blending the 
quoted pleasantry and prudence of her elders with her 
own little jolly originalities. “In the winters we 
stay at grandma’s, way up to Grindon.” 

“Oh, what is up the river, please?” cried Hope, 
reminded by that, and turning round to Mrs. Drake 
for fuller answer than Theress could give. 


98 


HITHERTO. 


“ Farms and towns ; each way, with bridges across ; 
woods sometimes where you sail along at night in still, 
shady water, with the hushes bending down over the 
banks, and great trees filling up all the sky except a 
little river full of stars, ” said Antoinette Drake, talk- 
ing unconscious poetry in her simple way. Because, 
you see, she lived in the midst of it, and breathed 
it in; she could give forth nothing else, answering 
a question like that. It was matter of fact to her. 
You might have found her common and practical 
enough, try her at other points ; her cookery, for ex- 
ample, or her gowns, or her visits ashore in the great 
towns; and utterly uncomprehending of an abstract 
thought, perhaps. 

“And people? ” went on Hope. 

“Oh, yes; people, of course, people everywhere, ex- 
cept in the woods.” 

“It ’s queer,” said Hope meditatively. 

“What?” asked Mrs. Drake. “Queer that there 
should be people? If there war n’t, what should we 
go up and down for ? ” 

“It ’s queer that they should be there, and I should 
be here. And if I was there, that they would be 
here.” 

“To-morrow’ll be to-day, when it comes,” said 
Antoinette, as if she had cheapened one wonder by 
bringing forward another. 

“ Does this river rise in the mountains ? ” queried 
Hope, remembering the geography lessons she had 
caught scraps of in school. 

“Yes, and comes down through them. But the 
schooner can’t go up there.” 

^^How does it rise? ” Hope had dim idea, perhaps, 
of some grand apparitional birth, in full grandeur, of 
flood and mist out of awful recesses. 

“Oh, it just begins, that ’s all. As likely as not 


ONE OF THESE BAYS, 99 

you could put the first of it into a waterpail or a pint 
bowl; only it keeps coming.” 

“That ’s a great ‘only/ isn’t it? It seems to me 
everything is ‘only.’ I mightn’t he anywhere in the 
world ; that seems so funny sometimes ; only God did 
make me. God mightn’t have been, either; and 
then there wouldn’t have been anything, at all. Only 
He is.” 

“I guess you’re an odd little stick,” said Mrs. 
Drake. 

“How should you like to go up river, yourself?” 
she asked Hope presently. 

“I’m going, some time. I’ve just made up my 
mind.” 

“You ’re one of the sort that can’t be got ahead of. 
I ’d like John to come back and talk to you a spell.” 

John did come before she went. He showed her 
other things, that she had not seen, — the wheel, and 
how it moved the rudder, and how that steered the 
vessel ; a long chart, — picture, she called it, — of 
the river, with the channels and rocks and islands and 
landings, all marked out, and the names of the towns 
on the shores. 

“Mr. Captain,” she said to him, very seriously, 
after they had come to easy friendliness over this, “if 
ever you see any people up the river that would like 
to have a little girl come to live with them, will you 
tell ’em to come to the asylum and get me? Folks 
take girls so, and Miss Hammond says I’m to be 
bound out, or adopted, or something, soon. You see, 
I ’d like it to be up the river, because there it grows 
green and pleasant ; down, there are the dirty wharves 
and streets, and then they say you come out to where 
it ’s all water; and then, perhaps, I ’d have to go to 
France. I ’d rather go up toward the mountains! ” 

“ Do you know anything about mountains ? ” 


100 


HITHERTO. 


“Yes, I used to live there, a great many years 
ago. 

Just four it was; Hope was eleven now, but a 
strange dimness of antiquity had gathered over that 
small past of hers, out of which an older perception 
would apprehend that she had but barely come. 

John Drake smiled. 

“She’s a little old-fashioned thing, as ever you 
see,” said Antoinette, by way of helping him, wife- 
fashion, to recognize that which was before his eyes, 
but which had happened to come first before her own. 

“She ’s smart and knowing, too,” she added. “If 
anybody did want a girl to bring up — I guess I ’ll 
mention it in Grindon.” 

“I don’t think that place sounds pretty,” said 
Hope. “Here ’s one that does,” she went on, return- 
ing to the examination of the chart, — “‘Broadfields.’ 
That seems large, and green, and sunshiny. I ’d like 
to go there. I wish you ’d mention me in Broad- 
fields, ” she added very gravely. 

“I guess I will,” said John Drake. “You’ve 
pitched qn the very picture of a place for prettiness, 
of all that ’s on the river. And likeliness, too, for 
that matter,” he added. “Now supposing you see if 
you can eat a big apple.” And he pulled out of his 
coat pocket, turning it inside out as he did so, with 
the bulk of the fruit and his own fist grasping it, an 
enormous red apple; red all over, shining and daz- 
zling; red half through, he told her, — “see if it 
wasn’t.” 

“I ’ve got another in my other pocket for Theress, ” 
he said, as he perceived her hesitate. 

“I thought something smelt apple-y, ” said Hope, 
quite excited, and coloring up with gratitude. “Just 
like Mrs. Gilspey’s back garden. Thank you, sir. 
I ’ll give a piece to Barbara Graice, and one to old 


ONE OF THESE DAYS. 


101 


Mrs. Whistler. She ’s one of the Indigents. There T1 
be ever so many pieces.” There always were ever so 
many pieces in any pleasure that came to Hope. 

Just at that instant, the great church clock in Tower 
Street began its stroke of twelve. 

“There ! I ’ve got to go back now, straight away ! ” 
she said, jumping up, prompt as Cinderella at her first 
ball. “But I don’t care! I’ve had stcch a good 
time ! ” 

John Drake helped her up the plank. “I ’ll hear 
it in mind about Broadfields, ” he said. “I shall be 
at New Oxford to-morrow. That ’s the end of my 
run; schooners don’t go higher than that. Broadfields 
is the next place. There ’s mostly folks down, and 
I know some of ’em. I shouldn’t much wonder if 
you got a chance, some time ; not right off, this trip, 
perhaps.” 

“Oh, no,” said Hope. “I don’t ever have things 
right off, hardly. One of these days.” She promised 
herself, as other people promised her. 


CHAPTER VIII. 
harm’s providence. 

Hope took her patchwork and went up into the Old 
Ladies’ Room. She had her piece of apple, also, to 
carry to Mrs. Whistler ; she had kept it all, untouched, 
for three days, till Saturday afternoon came; and she 
had the whole story of the schooner, and the river pic- 
ture, and Antoinette and Theress, and the blue chest, 
and the kind, hearty captain himself, to tell to her 
old friend. 

It was a long room, with six windows in it; three 
at each end; two large chambers and two little dress- 
ing-rooms had been thrown into one apartment, taking 
the whole third story of the house. The floor was 
bare, scrubbed white; there were strips of carpet laid 
down beside the beds, which were single, all alike, 
ranged with their heads against the wall on either side 
the fireplace ; one also in each square recess formed by 
the taking in of the little dressing-rooms just men- 
tioned, which had been at the ends of the passage. 

These recesses were the desirable places, — the cor- 
ner lots, having a window and some extra space, and 
the advantage of comparative retirement ; next to these 
were held in high consideration the cots precisely op- 
posite, with a window in each narrow passage along- 
side, the special franchise of their occupants ; the 
places by the fire ranked third, — in winter perhaps 
took precedence. The four who lodged between floated 
about; considered the middle windows theirs of right, 
but went visiting, — especially in the square before 
the fire in fire-times; the coterie here, indeed, of a 
frozen winter’s day, became a grand assembly. 


HARM'S PROVIDENCE. 


103 


These old women had their etiquettes, their cliques, 
their jealousies and rivalries, their real friendships. 
Some of them had their visiting lists, also, of people 
outside; friends of old times who came to see them; 
benefactresses who remembered their wants and in- 
firmities with little gifts; each section of the room 
displayed in its comforts and small adornments the 
resources, in such wise, of its owner. Here came in 
one rivalry, the constant and prevailing one; another 
was in the number and severity of past misfortunes. 

An old woman who could tell a tale of better days, 
when her husband had sailed an India ship for rich 
owners, and she had lived in a pretty two-story house 
in a seacoast village, “with carpets to all the floors, 
and white curtains to the windows, and real china in 
the closet ; ” of a terrible hurt he got at sea, and be- 
ing brought home on his back, a cripple for the rest 
of his days, and of his “living along most mysteriously 
by the will of God ” till all their saved-up funds were 
spent; of a fire that came after he had died, and 
“neighbors had come forrud and made up a purse, and 
the old owners had sent down a hundred dollars, and 
she had just begun to get cleared up and settle down, 
and thinking of a little comfort taking in a coupl^ of 
boarders, and house and carpets and curtains had been 
burnt up, and most of the china broke a-saving of it ; ” 
of going out nursing after that, and “living round 
amongst pains and aches till she got so many of her 
own she had to come here with ’em, and lay out to 
make the best she could of ’em, and thank God they 
was no wuss, and she ’d got the east corner where the 
sun came in o’ mornings, ” — she, perhaps, carried the 
palm; but it was disputed by another, who had lost 
her husband in early youth, out West, where they had 
begun on a farm; had had fever and ague, “till the 
courage was nigh shook out of her ; ” had got home 


HITHERTO. 


104 

again somehow, to the East, and brought up her two 
children, a girl and a boy; the girl married a well- 
to-do country trader, and then, “before s’ever they’d 
got into the new house he built she went and died ; ” 
and the boy would learn a painter’s trade, “though 
she knew ’twas awful unwholesome, and never wholly 
give in to it; and there! three years ago he died, of 
pison on the lungs, and she came here, and she ’d got 
an inside-hed and no rocking-chair, and was wore to 
death bearin’ of Mis’ Parcher’s china.” “You ’ve 
had your bread and butter, some of it,” she would say 
reproachfully to the shipmaster’s widow, when they 
strove in lamentation together; “but mine alwers 
slipped clean through my fingers, butter-side down ! ” 

Mrs. Whistler never joined in these comparisons of 
ill; she dwelt as it were in a silent consciousness of 
greatness, — meek, thankful soul as she truly was ! — 
knowing that her long pain, of cureless disease, had 
only to be named to swallow up, like an Aaron’s rod, 
all lesser plaints; and when her nights and days of 
sufferings came, as they would at intervals, — when 
her envied west corner, the best in all the room, was 
full of a low, patient moan, — these tellings and 
stri;^ngs hushed themselves about her, and her house- 
mates would look over at her, stealthily and pitifully, 
and lean their heads together and whisper questionings 
of whether “she ’d go this time,” and after a decent 
pause and with a preface of a sigh, would wonder 
“who ’d get the corner after her; ’t would seem 
strange to see another body there ; ” and then a clos- 
ing sigh would make the sentence properly parentheti- 
cal. 

Mrs. Whistler sat and sewed upon fine cambric; 
she was making, stitch by stitch, her cap and shroud ; 
but it might have been a young girl busy at her wed- 
ding finery, for the cheer there would be about her on 


MARM^S PROVIDENCE. 


105 

her well days when she could so work. Up over her 
head was a little bookcase of two shelves; here she 
had some old, friendly volumes that had lived with 
her through all that history of years that she never in 
its continuity related ; some, also, that a kindness of 
to-day had placed there for their pleasant pictures and 
comfortable thoughts. 

Hope read out of these aloud to her, sometimes; 
sometimes she had a book to carry away and read her- 
self, by the staircase window; this was how she came 
by “Paradise Lost.” 

She held up the great piece of apple, — almost the 
half, freshly cut, — the red side out, toward Mrs. 
Whistler. 

“That’s for you — to begin with,” she said; and 
so she pulled a little cricket, and sat down. 

“Harm’s Providence, again, dear,” said the old 
woman. “First a- waiting and a- wanting, and then 
presently you know why. It ’s just like the day my 
gruel got burnt, and then Miss Ainsworth came in 
with that elegant chicken broth. I ’ve been thirsty 
ever since my dinner, — the soup was salt to-day, — 
and not a drink of water in the room, nor anybody 
happening in to go and fetch one. It was just <that 
piece of apple on the way and my mouth a-making up 
for it.” 

Hope knew what “Harm’s Providence” meant; 
she had asked that question and been told about it 
long before. 

“It was when we were little, at home, that it be- 
gan,” had been the story. “My mother always set 
her faith on Providence; and father, he used to call 
her ‘Marm; ’ it was a homely, old-fashioned, country 
way of calling, but it meant the whole with him, — 
wife, and heart’s queen, and mainstay, and head, and 
contriver, and everything that a woman could be to 


106 


HITHERTO. 


a man, or to a house. I used to think he had Marm, 
and Marm had Providence; though he believed as 
firm as she did in his heart, only he liked to lay it off 
on to her, as he did everything else. He gave her the 
credit, and let her go ahead, and just eased things 
along for her. We had him, and Marm, and Provi- 
dence, all three; it wasn’t likely hut we would be 
well cared for. So, when anything looked a little 
dubious, as if it might n’t work out well, or we 
could n’t see, perhaps, how a thing was to he done 
that needed to be, he’d say, ‘ Marm ’s Providence ’ll 
see to that, I guess; ’ and it always did. After she 
died, he kept on saying it, and it kept on coming true ; 
he said it with a different sound to it, though ; maybe 
it ain’t quite right, hut I ’ve thought it might have 
been somehow so that Saint Paul used to say, ‘the 
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.’ I know better now 
what that means, thinking of father’s love, and mo- 
ther’s trustingness, and how he depended on what she 
lived so sure by.” 

“Are you pretty well to-day? ” asked Hope. 

“Well, child, yes; and satisfied. That ^ swell, I 
shall live just long enough. I did think I ’d have 
been gone before this ; hut when you ’re certain, you 
needn’t he in a hurry. ‘Thank the Lord for daily 
breath, hut leap for joy at certain death, ’ — that ’s 
what I say to myself. The comfort and the rest are 
pretty near. That ’s what the ache and the tiredness 
mean. And they ’ll be according. When I think of 
that, it almost makes me greedy of pain. It ’s God’s 
note of hand, Hope. Lay it up, — against your time 
comes.” 

“And now, I’ve got a story to tell,” says Hope. 
Not breaking in disregardfully ; she always listened 
Mrs. Whistler through; laying up, so, more treasure 
than she counted at the moment, “against her time 


« 


MARM’S PROVIDENCE. 


107 

should come ; ” but with childish straightforwardness, 
she made no forced reply, took her turn to speak, and 
spoke what was waiting in her. 

“How your eyes shine, child! ” said the old lady. 
“Harm’s Providence has been doing something new 
for you I ” 

“ Where do you think that apple came from ? ” 
Hope asked, her eyes sparkling yet more, in her impa- 
tience to tell all. 

“Out of some orchard, where the sun shone on it, 
and it grew and grew, and sweetened and sweetened, 
it didn’t know what for. No more do you.” 

“But last of all?” pursued Hope. “You can’t 
guess. I ’ll tell you. It came up the river in a 
schooner! At least, — I don’t know; but it came out 
of a man’s pocket that had come up the river in a 
schooner, and he was the captain of it. How do you 
suppose I got it ? ” 

“Well, he met you on the wharf and gave it to 
you?” 

“Oh, you can’t half guess! ” cried Hope, laughing 
out. “It was a great deal better than that! I was 
in the schooner with him ; and Antoinette was there, 
and Theress; they live there, and go up and down! 
They told me what was up the river, and he showed 
me a picture of it. There ’s woods, and towns, and 
meadows, and hills; and people everywhere. Places, 
Mrs. Whistler, and chances. There ’s no knowing 
what there might be up that river! ” 

Hope made very determined pauses, now and then, 
and pulled her needle through and through her patch- 
work seam diligently; it was needful, that her sewing 
might catch up with her talk. Then she began again. 

“It goes so, in one place; ” and she laid a strip of 
calico down upon her knee, and scored with her needle 
a winding mark upon it. “It makes a great scallop, 


108 


HITHERTO. 


and in that scallop is Broadfields. How does that 
sound? What do you think of that, for a place? 
With hills behind, and the river in front? He told 
me so. And everything green and wide, and nothing 
in the way of the sky ? ” 

“I think you ’d like to go there, some time, would n’t 
you? Or to a place like it? I think your mouth’s 
a-making up for it, and I think you ’ll get it.” 

“Do you, truly, Mrs. Whistler?” Hope’s great 
eyes widened, and their golden color was clear and 
beaming. “I told him that I wished he ’d mention 
me in Broadfields, ” she added, in her quaint way, try- 
ing to speak very quietly and reasonably. “And — 
why, that ’s all my story, every word of it ! I thought 
I had ever so much to tell ! ” 

“You’ll go.” Mrs. Whistler looked at the child 
wishfully, as she repeated this. 

Hope’s golden eyes suddenly clouded. “Oh dear! ” 
she cried, “I never thought. You won’t have me to 
come and see you, if I do. What will you have 
instead ? ” 

“Marm’s Providence will take care of that,” se- 
renely quoted Mrs. Whistler from the Family Creed. 

It was homely faith and a homely phrase ; but the 
soul of it was grand as that of the old Hebrew re- 
frain, — “The God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and 
of Jacob.” 

The half-hour hell rang below, and Hope folded up 
her small work, and stuck her needle in. At that 
moment Miss Hammond opened the Old Ladies’ door. 

“Hope? Oh, you are here! You’re wanted in 
the matron’s room.” 

“It’s come, — the beginning of it,” said Mrs. 
Whistler softly, to herself. “And I think now, 
it’ll he my turn pretty soon. ‘Up the river — with 
the hills behind ; green, and wide, and nothing in the 


MARM^S PROVIDENCE. 


109 


way of the sky.’ ‘The gates of it shall not be shut 
by day, and there shall be no night there. The Lamb 
who is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and 
lead them unto living fountains of water. And there 
shall be no more pain. And God shall wipe away all 
tears from their eyes.’ ” 

The old lady folded up her work also. There were 
but a few stitches to be set. “Another day,” she 
said, and stuck the needle in. 

Another day, only a week later, somebody else fin- 
ished the last stitches. 

Somebody else might have the west corner now. 

Hope went sailing up the river. In the still of the 
sunset, and the early beauty of the moon, — through 
calm wood-shadow, looking up into the “river of 
stars,” out into meadow-broadenings where the per- 
fect sphere of heaven arched over a perfect plane of 
earth, — she went, making a dream- voyage of delight. 
She slept through the mere midnight; when the dawn 
reddened over the hills, she was out on deck again; 
she saw the rosiness creep and blush, and spread and 
burn into the intense pervading light of the white day ; 
she heard the cocks crow from the cheery farms, chant- 
ing their fresh all-hail to the earth as her features 
came up out the darkness. “Old world! how do you 
do-oo-o ? ” A mystical stir everywhere was rising out 
of the hush of night; the very grass-blades and the 
river-sedge rustled as they had not rustled before, and 
the great trees stretched their green arms from their 
sleep ; and out on the high road she could hear the dis- 
tant sound of wagon- wheels and horses’ feet. 

It was yet early morning when they hauled up to 
the pier at New Oxford. Up from the water, street 
above street, three rows or four, the white houses stood, 
with a green surge of treetops swelling up between; 


110 


HITHERTO. 


and there was a hum in the town of going to and fro ; 
yet, compared with the city, it was still. It would 
he stiller out toward Broadfields ; almost as still as it 
had been down the river among the meadows. 

Hope stood by the rail, her bright hair blowing in 
the pleasant wind; the morning sunshine on it; her 
eyes all alight with expectation. 

A young man, sitting in an open wagon on the 
wharf, tossed the reins over his horse’s back and sprang 
out. He and John Drake shook hands. Then he 
turned to the young girl his honest, kindly face. 

“You’ve come?” he said; and helped her up the 
plank upon the pier. 

A stranger in a strange place. Going to a new home, 
where there might be good for her, or there might be 
ill; standing between the blue, free, glistening river 
and the busy town, as she stood at this moment be- 
tween her bright dream and the reality that was to 
come of it ; but showing a pure certainty in the clear, 
wonderful eyes, and a fresh, radiant eagerness in her 
whole face and figure, over which the morning sun was 
shining and the sweet wind blew. 

“ What is your name ? ” asked Richard Hathaway. 

“ Hope Devine, ” replied the girl, lifting the golden 
light of her eyes upon him. 

“Whew! ” That does not spell it; it was a low, 
gentle breathing of surprise, not rude, but blithe and 
musical. “I think so! ” 

It had happened that the busy early summer-time 
was coming, and that Mrs. Hathaway’s Martha needed 
help ; Richard had seen it, as he was quick to see every 
want that touched his mother. 

It happened that John Drake was Richard Hatha- 
way’s friend. Happened? This, also, was “Marm’s 
Providence. ” 







CHAPTER IX. 

WHAT ANSTISS DOLBEARE REMEMBERS. 

SOUTH SIDE. 

One day that next summer, Augusta Hare came 
among us ten times more a heroine than ever. Where 
she was, things happened. John Gilpin never rode a 
race hut she was there to see. Some people seem to 
have a sort of resinous electricity like this, which 
draws inevitably toward them all flying shreds, big 
and little, of mortal circumstance. 

She came up on the stage, unannounced, in borrowed 
clothing; beside which, she had nothing on earth to 
bring with her but her guitar, and a pink calico wrap- 
per; a pink calico wrapper for her to whom nothing 
was yet legitimate but crape and bombazine, or little 
white-dotted black muslins and calicoes at the lightest. 
I remember how this pointed the calamity, and seemed 
to give a dramatic emphasis and underscoring to the 
tale of general desecration and violence. 

The Ursuline convent had been burned down by a 
mob. 

A little piece of Middle Age life had been revived 
and enacted in our tamely proper New England com- 
munity. Shrieking nuns driven from the sanctity of 
their cloister ; the sacred walls invaded at midnight by 
rough, infuriated men, rushing where the feet of men, 
since builders ended their first labors, had never pene- 
trated before. Quietness and holy seclusion changed 
in an hour for riot and blazing devastation. 

Augusta told us all about it, graphically. How, out 
of a sound sleep, she had been startled by a rude, gruff 


112 


HITHERTO. 


voice, and a man’s rough hand laid forcibly on her 
shoulder. “Get up, if you want to save your life! ” 
had been the warning; and a red torch went flashing 
past her open door. How, in her nightdress, with 
bare feet, and hair streaming, catching at this pink 
wrapper which happened to lie beside her on a chair, 
she sprang from her bed, and followed her arouser into 
the corridor ; how he spoke a little more gently then, 
seeing her fright, — seeing also herself, I could not 
help inferring, — and even asked if she had anything 
in particular that she wished to save. How, never 
thinking of her clothes, as not one soul in fifty ever 
does think of the right thing in a fire, she had said 
“her guitar,” and how he had snatched up the case, 
and, taking it under his arm, had hurried her along 
the passages and down the stairs, meeting wild, ex- 
cited men at every step, and out into the shrubbery, 
where she overtook some fleeing nuns ; how they found 
shelter in the town, and the sisters had to put on such 
profane costume as people could lend them, and she 
“had nothing under the sun to go downstairs in hut 
that pink gown.” 

Augusta was always personally circumstantial in her 
narrations; she lived in the accessories, I think; that 
was how the real things passed over her so lightly. 
How she stood, and what she was doing, when a sur- 
prising or dreadful piece of news came, — the little 
touches of phase and grouping that made a picture of 
an incident, — these were given with wonderful in- 
stinctive skill; and the strong light fell always on the 
principal figure. “ Quceque ipse vidi et quorum pars 
magna fui.^’ If you knew this little bit of Virgil, it 
came up. It seemed really charming, hearing her re- 
cite them, to have endured such things, to have met 
with such adventure; above all, to have them now to 
tell, 


WHAT ANSTISS DOLBEABE BEMEMBEBS. 113 

The public occurrence excited strongly our little 
community. Anything like lawlessness was then so 
rare, that men’s minds leaped at the suggestion to the 
wildest fancies of possible prevailing anarchy; people 
stopped in the streets to talk about it. Uncle Royle’s 
bookstore was full of eager gossipers ; it is amusing to 
compare the stir made then with the fleeting impres- 
sions of to-day. Two words, after a morning saluta- 
tion in a railroad-car, are the sum and end of all the 
attention any event can claim. In those days, people 
came long, separate ways to get together, and when 
assembled, they would talk the thing down to the bare 
thread. 

Augusta Hare was regarded with intense curiosity; 
she represented the whole catastrophe, and brought 
New Oxford into special relation with it. Even after 
she got a proper dress, she was quite modest about 
venturing into the streets, she was looked at so; and 
at church, for a Sunday or two, it was positively awk- 
ward. She had remarkable tact, though; it never 
seemed a silly, palpable affectation in her; it was 
simply, I believe, the sympathetic action of her own 
intense self-consciousness that made those about her 
recognize what I can only describe as her centrality. 

And we, happy household ! became, by a singularity 
of circumstance, a part, also, of this sublimity. 

The Edgells were away, and the house was closed. 
Margaret and Julia were in the midst of their summer 
term at school, and Mr. and Mrs. Edgell had just left, 
upon a long journey. So the stage had come round to 
River Street, bringing Augusta Hare, and her guitar 
case, and her pink wrapper, and her romantic conse- 
quence ; and she had begged Miss Chism to take her 
in for a few days, if she could spare her a room. She 
asked it gracefully, and as an especial favor; implying 
delicately, at the same time, compensation. We were 


114 


HITHEBTO. 


too well off for that; we could not think of it, of 
course; Miss Hare was made welcome as a guest. 
And this was a great and wonderful event to me. 

The worst of it was, that the politer Aunt Hdy was 
to Augusta Hare, the harder she was to me. I always 
got on better with Miss Chism when I was quite alone 
with her ; my familiar crimes were not brought in such 
black contrast with the veiled infirmities and presumed 
excellences of strangerhood. The gracious confidences 
of Aunt Hdy with our guest were times of exclusion 
for me; not literal exclusion, but that worse interior 
consciousness of being thrust aside, and as it were con- 
temned. I was even under a curious impression, from 
my aunt’s manner, of its being a shortcoming in me 
that I had not been, somehow, nearly burnt up, or 
otherwise distinguished; that if I had but been, I 
might take a quite different stand with her. I was a 
commonplace child only, and a trial; the interesting 
and the effective were not for me. 

I knew this well enough; but how was I to help it? 
She would not let me go to a convent, — not even to 
a boarding-school. Of course. Aunt Hdy had really 
no such actual undervaluing of me in her mind ; it was 
only a peculiarity of hers that she could not be very 
gracious in more than one direction at once ; the effect, 
however, was the same with me. I had all manner of 
fancies of what might happen; I might break an arm 
or a leg some day, and be brought home, — I had given 
up my childish notion of tHe glory of fainting away. 
I might secretly compose some verses, and get them 
printed in a paper, and become famous. I might, one 
of these days, have a lover, — though where he was to 
come from, or how come after me there with the Chism 
battery in the way, was hard to guess, — and get mar- 
ried. The burning ambition of my soul was to make 
myself, some day, of consequence with Miss Chism. 


WHAT ANSTISS BOLBEARE REMEMBERS. 115 

I was not so unlike all the rest of the world in this. 
Miss Chism, like Mrs. Grundy, was a representative 
woman; everybody who has a goading ambition has 
knowledge, in one guise or another, of a cold, exasper- 
ating unrecognition which it would be worth while to 
die and conquer. 

Miss Hare had numerous calls of inquiry, and abun- 
dant invitations, from the very first. The Copes’ car- 
riage waited at the door for nearly an hour, while the 
young ladies were hearing the whole story and trying 
to persuade Augusta to go home with them. But she 
put them off. By and by, perhaps, if they could have 
her; but Miss Chism had been very kind, and she 
could not run right away. I think this was truly a 
reason with her, and that she was not ungrateful; also 
I think she was fond of me ; but it was true, as well, 
that her plain sewing and dressmaking were yet to be 
completed, and she would rather have an adequate 
wardrobe before visiting at South Side. 

She took me with her one afternoon, when she 
walked over and called at the Copes’. I felt very 
nicely dressed that day, I remember. I had a new 
blue muslin, and Aunt Ildy allowed me to put it on. 
Indeed, Augusta Hare took friendly little liberties in 
her easy, pleasant way, assuming it for granted that I 
could wear what I chose, and suggesting this or that, 
sometimes, in Aunt Ildy’s presence. I had the ben- 
efit of it ; hut it gave me the old feeling of a sort of 
duplicity on my part; and, sometimes, I objected 
against my own secret wish, because I had an instinct 
of Miss Chism’s secret disrelish. Then I knew I was 
double; yet it was only a crooked conscientiousness. 

I had on my blue muslin, and my straw bonnet, that 
had been new last fall, trimmed with white ribbon; 
and Augusta Hare had given me a pretty French collar 
with a lace edge, and a blue bow. 


116 


HITHEBTO. 


It was almost tea-time for us ; but the Copes had 
only just got through dinner. “The ladies will be in 
from the dining-room directly, ” the servant said who 
showed us into the pleasant, cool library, with its sum- 
mer matting on the floor, and its furniture and hang- 
ings of heavy green damask. Great cases of books 
reached from the floor to the ceiling, and from side to 
side ; between the shelves hung fringed green velvet ; 
silver branches for candles were fastened beside the 
frames. I supposed, in my simplicity, that these 
walls of literature represented the familiar reading of 
the family, that every one of them knew it all ; I was 
quite oppressed with the air of elegance and learning. 

I do not think that I was outwardly awkward; my 
quick feeling of grace and beauty gave me immunity 
from this; but I braced my feet nervously against the 
floor, and did not know it till my toes began to ache; 
and I could not think of a word to say beyond mere 
replies, when the girls came in and tried to be sociable 
with me. 

Mrs. Cope gave me a feeling of comfort the minute 
she appeared. She was such a simple, sweet, mo- 
therly lady ; with the old-time dignity upon her that 
was homely also. She had on a large white muslin 
apron over her silk dress, and her basket of white sew- 
ing stood in a deep window-seat, just as she had left 
it to go in to dinner. She made me think at once, 
and did always after, of Mrs. Selby in the cedar par- 
lor, in “Sir Charles Grandison.” 

She sat down by me, and showed me some beautiful 
pictures of English scenery, and stately interiors of old 
hills and castles. Mr. Cope had been a great deal 
abroad. She was explaining these when Allard Cope 
came in. He was my dancing- school partner of two 
years ago. He was a handsome hoy, with the grace of 
high breeding, and the free courtesy that only comes 


WHAT ANSTISS DOLBEABE REMEMBERS. 117 


of having received as well as given it, all one’s life. 
At this time he was about sixteen. 

His sisters introduced him to Miss Hare, to whom 
he bowed, and then came and sat down by his mother 
and me. We finished looking over the portfolio we 
had begun, and then Mrs. Cope asked Allard to fetch 
another, which had views of Paris. As he came back 
with it, a carriage was driven to the door, from which 
other visitors alighted, and were shown in. Mrs. Cope 
moved to receive them, and Allard and I drew back 
into a corner, where he remained with me, turning 
over the engravings and talking about them. 

It was a glimpse into such a rich and beautiful life ! 
So rich and beautiful that it made me afraid, but for 
Allard’s kindness and Mrs. Cope’s simpleness. I 
thought that with them I should not have been afraid, 
if it had been even ten times more stately and splen- 
did. I thought I could even get used to it all in a 
short time, and accept it as quietly as they did. 

We all went down into the garden presently. Mrs. 
Cope had some new French roses which she wished to 
show to her friends. She went and put on a white 
muslin sunbonnet, and brought a pair of garden scis- 
sors, and then led the way down the broad, shallow 
steps which descended from a flagged terrace, at the 
back of the house, to the smooth green-turf walks and 
exquisitely kept flower-beds of the pleasure-grounds. 

Allard still stayed with me, and while his mother, 
chatting gracefully, cut here and there choice blossoms, 
and gathered them into a great nosegay for the ladies 
with her, he pulled roses and sweet- verbena sprigs and 
delicious pinks and white lilies for me. 

I was so glad that I had on my blue muslin, and 
that my gloves and shoes were quite new. I felt a 
warm color spreading in my cheeks, and that I looked 
up brightly at him in answer to the bright, kind looks 
he gave me. I walked in a sort of fairy land. 


118 


HITHERTO. 


Coming up again, after we had fed the goldfish in 
a clear pond at the garden-foot, we got grouped differ- 
ently. Augusta Hare and Allard walked together, 
and the Miss Copes took me with them. I had grown 
gay and fearless now; we talked about the old school- 
times at the Academy, and of the Edgells, and of when 
they would leave school and come home. The Copes 
remembered that I was bright at puzzles and games, 
and sure at hard lessons. They reverted casually to 
these things, in a way far more flattering than abrupt 
compliment ; they made me feel that they held me in 
some consideration. I am sure there was never a more 
thoroughly polite family than the Copes. 

I dare say they never thought of me again till they 
were especially reminded; hut they sent me home full 
of delighted thoughts of them, and ecstatic remem- 
brances of the beautiful hour that they had given me. 
Augusta Hare told me something as we walked down 
to the bridge, which nearly completed my mental over- 
setting, and made me feel a sudden electric flash of 
pleasure escape from my eyes, as I had felt the con- 
scious sparkle of passion that day with Aunt Ildy at 
Hathaway Farm. Allard Cope had said, “What a 
very pretty girl ” I was I 

Aunt Ildy thought, the next day, that it had n’t 
agreed with me visiting at South Side; I couldn’t 
seem to settle to anything properly. It was true that 
I was more forgetful, and that small home duties were 
more irksome to me than ever. I suppose I was really 
quite good for nothing, by severely practical appraisal, 
for a day or two; hut I thought Aunt Ildy might 
make some allowance for the first time, and what it 
must be to me. Experiences are possible to the grav- 
est and most methodical, which may utterly break in 
upon their order, and absorb their thoughts; which 
may he great enough in their gladness or their grief 


WHAT ANSTISS DOLBEABE BEMEMBEBS. 119 


Id sweep away from before them all ordinary claim 
and obstacle. I have seen it so; it takes far more to 
do this as one gets on in life; but the elders should 
remember that everything is great to the young; each 
pleasant novelty is an overwhelming excitement; all 
disappointment is tremendous loss ; every new look at 
life is an opening into the limitless possible and to 
come; they should allow place for what Aunt Ildy 
called ‘‘scatter-wittedness; ” it will take place now 
and then in the programme, where there are wits to 
scatter; beginning as they do upon a world so full of 
dispersed demand and attraction. 

I sobered down as fast as I could; I hid away 
thoughts and dreams to be called up and fully in- 
dulged at rare moments ; I confined my talk with Aunt 
Ildy, and in her presence, to the most staid and useful 
matters ; to Lucretia in her own room, I told over and 
over again the story of that lovely afternoon. 

All through this fifteenth summer of my life, — I 
was fourteen in June, — I seemed to be looking one 
way and the other, — touching alternately, and shar- 
ing with, two distinct kinds of living. There was a 
charm in each. They were separate from each other; 
at least, they rarely met in any conscious sympathy; 
they were wholly unlike and irreconcilable in practice ; 
yet I, from a middle point, could turn easily and hap- 
pily to either. There are almost indistinguishable 
gradations in our New England life and society; espe- 
cially in country towns. It was perfectly natural for 
me to associate freely with the Edgells; it was as 
natural for them to be noticed by the Copes ; it was 
not an overstrained condescension now and then for 
the Copes to be kind to me. It was as pleasant and 
as natural, on the other hand, for me to go to the 
Hathaways, and to be happy at the farm. Indeed, 
though neither of them probably dreamed of it, I, 


120 


HITHERTO. 


having experience of the goodness and lovableness of 
both, found Mrs. Cope and Mrs. Hathaway by no 
means unlike. Simpleness and perfect breeding in 
the one were akin to, and remindful of, plain dignity 
and sweet whole-heartedness in the other. I could 
imagine them almost easily changing places, if circum- 
stance should work so. 

My position was the middle and prosaic, the nega- 
tive one, the wishful and the restless one, being able 
to look so, each way, into the others. 

Just before the Edgells returned home, Augusta 
Hare came in one morning from the Copes’, where she 
was now staying, being set down at our door by the 
young ladies, who had driven on to attend to business 
in the town. She called to ask Aunt Ildy if I might 
come over to South Side and take tea that afternoon. 

We were in the sitting-room, and I was doing up 
ruffles at the large table where I had my ruffling- iron. 
It wanted a fresh heater at that moment, and I qui- 
etly drew out the cold one and went into the kitchen 
to exchange it. My heart was going like a little trip- 
hammer, but I did not move so much as an eyelid. I 
knew'my sole chance depended on my not getting ex- 
cited, or pleading too impetuously. It was safer to 
leave the pleading to Miss Hare. 

It was a good stroke my leaving the room. I was 
really calmer when I came back ; and Aunt Ildy had 
not committed herself by an immediate refusal in my 
hearing, which could not have been receded from. 
She had probably half refused at first ; when I came 
in, Augusta was saying in her most winning way : — 

“You’ll think of it, I’m sure. Miss Chism; we 
shall all hope to see her ; but you need not trouble to 
send word, you know. If she comes, she can be there 
by four. And Mrs. Cope sent her love, and asked 
me to beg of you, if you would be so kind, to let her 


WHAT ANSTISS DOLBEARE REMEMBERS. 121 


have your receipt for white currant wine that I told 
her of. Anstiss can bring it ; or if anything does pre- 
vent, I ’ll call again for it.” 

The carriage was heard in the street below, and 
Augusta rose. 

“See about it, Aunt Ildy, won’t you?” she re- 
peated, and was gone. 

She had wonderful tact. She might have known 
Aunt Ildy all her life, and not done better. If she 
had pressed for an immediate answer, it would very 
likely have been “No.” That would have been on the 
safe side. But she showed a sweet confidingness, gave 
plenty of time for thinking it over, and left her desire 
at Miss Chism’s discretion. 

“Have you finished marking those new pillow- 
cases ? ” asked Aunt Ildy of me. It was Saturday, 
and they were to be put in the wash on Monday. 

“All but four. Auntie,” I replied. “I can do 
those after dinner.” And I went on fluting my ruffle. 

“ Can I go. Aunt Ildy ? ” I asked a few minutes 
later when I had finished, and was about to carry away 
the things, the topmost of which were two caps of her 
own, exquisitely white and light with their double 
bordering of cambric and lace laid in the finest and 
most regular groovings. 

“I don’t know; I ’ll see,” replied Miss Chism. 

I considered that as good as settled, after the old 
understanding, especially as I saw her go to the old- 
fashioned secretary presently, take down her manu- 
script receipt book, and try a pen. 

I did not wait to watch her, but made haste up- 
stairs. Then on the very tips of my toes, right over 
her head, but so lightly that not an old board creaked 
in the floor, I executed an original inspired waltz, end- 
ing with a flourish that I had never heard of by name, 
but which was legitimate art, — a real, perfect pirou- 


122 


HITHEBTO. 


ette. Dancing is an utterance. I invented, out of 
my own gladness, one of its established parts of speech. 

I carried my blue muslin into the kitchen and ironed 
it out. I crimped my prettiest bits of lace, and basted 
them into the neck and sleeves. I laid out my nicest 
white petticoat, with little tucks and points round the 
bottom, — a work of long toil and many sorrows it 
had been to me, but I was very glad to have it now; 
in those days, before sewing-machines and the multi- 
plied extravagances of needlework, most young ladies 
made for themselves whatever elegances of the kind 
they had, and it was a shame at fifteen not to have 
made something ; I assured myself that my best open- 
worked thread stockings, with the silk clocks, were 
in fresh readiness and order, and I gave a look to 
the condition of my large starched under- sleeves of 
corded cambric, that were to hold out in balloon shape 
the full round over-sleeves of my dress, with their 
pointed, falling capes, trimmed with little ruffles of 
their own material. The crimpings of thread lace fin- 
ished delicately the close bands into which they were 
gathered about the arm. I had high morocco shoes of 
what we called tea-color, — pale, with plenty of cream 
in it, — laced up on the instep. All these things I 
put ready, and then went down and ate my dinner 
without the least bit of appetite, but with resolute 
show of common- sense. 

“ Shall I get ready, Aunt ? ” I asked, when I had 
helped her put away the glass and silver. 

“Yes, I suppose so.” • 

She did not speak ungraciously. She was never out- 
wardly affectionate to any one. With all her hardness 
of discipline, and her taking me at my worst by way 
of finally making the best of me, she had, I do not 
doubt, a stern regard for me at the bottom of her 
heart; but if she had said, “Yes, dear,” I should have 


WHAT AN8TISS DOLBEAEE BEMEMBEBS. 123 


thought she was gone mad or going to die ; or that the 
millennium had come, and had begun with her. 

I did look pretty when I had finished. My hair 
was getting a brighter, burnished tint upon the softness 
of the childish light-brown, and my eyes had the clear, 
intense shade which blue eyes only have in youth and 
health. I smiled at myself in the glass, remembering 
Allard Cope’s compliment, and I caught sight of small, 
even, white teeth between lips that were far prettier 
when smiling. I put a blue ribbon round my head, 
and fastened it in a bow over my left ear, letting the 
ends float down behind. I tucked them up, though, 
carefully, into the crown of my bonnet, as I tied that 
on. I buttoned on my long sleeves for the street, and 
put on my gloves. I was all ready then, and I went 
downstairs. 

“I don’t think it will be best for you to stay to tea, 
Anstiss, ” Aunt Ildy said, as if she were not crushing 
me down with an avalanche of cruel disappointment. 
Perhaps she really did not dream that she was. 

“ Oh, Aunt Ildy ! ” I cried, in a pain of involuntary 
resistance and reproach. 

“Don’t get excited now,” said Aunt Ildy. “You 
can go up and call, and carry the receipt. You can 
stay an hour, if you want to. But I don’t think it ’s 
best for you to stay to tea.” 

“Why didn’t you tell me so before? ” 

“I didn’t tell you anything about it. I’ve been 
thinking it over. There ’s nobody to go after you in 
the evening, and I don’t want to be under obligation 
to them for seeing you back. We can’t invite the 
Copes to tea. You must make up your mind, that I 
know best.” 

The tears were in my eyes and voice. There was a 
hot anger on my cheeks. I felt I had been ill treated, 
yet I could find nothing to gainsay. 


124 


HITHERTO. 


“I can^t go, just to tell them I can’t come,” I 
said despairingly, struggling against the tears and the 
temper. “They ’ll insist on my staying. They ’ll 
say they can send me home. I can’t tell them you 
won’t be under obligation.” 

“You can say what I tell you, — that it is n’t con- 
venient. If you can’t do that, you ’d better not go. 
You are not to stay to tea. That is all.” And she 
walked away, and left me standing there. 

When she was quite out of hearing, I stamped my 
foot down just once upon the floor. I think I should 
almost have died, if I had not done that. Then I ran 
downstairs, and out at the front door, and walked off, 
down Cross Street, opposite, fast toward the bridge. 

I walked so fast, and my feelings were in such a 
whirl, that I got to the Copes’ front door before I had 
begun to make up my mind what to say. They were 
all out on the back terrace, and the maid who met 
me recognized me, and showed me at once through the 
house to the garden entrance. 

Then I had it all to do in a minute, in the little 
bustle of greeting and welcome. I had to hold on to 
my bonnet- strings, when Laura Cope would have untied 
them ; to shrink away from Augusta Hare, who would 
have taken my muslin cape, and to stammer out con- 
fusedly, transposing and mixing up my meanings : — 
“No — I can’t — I only came — I did n’t come — 
to stop but — a great while ! ” 

They all smiled. They could not have helped it if 
they had been duchesses ; only their perfect good breed- 
ing kept them, I am sure, from shrieks. I laughed 
myself, in the midst of a flame of mortification, and a 
springing of tears. If I had known what I was in 
danger of, it would have been all over with me. I 
was as near hysterics as a simple child could be. 

“Never mind,” Mrs. Cope said kindly. “Sit here 


WHAT ANSTISS DOLBEARE REMEMBERS. 125 

in the shade by me. You are so warm with your 
walk. We ’ll talk about the bonnet presently.” 

The sweet summer wind came through great lin- 
den-trees and over fresh-smelling grass and masses of 
flowers. The calm, restful hills lay green and round 
against the blue horizon, and little white clouds went 
floating by, far overhead. There was a glimpse of 
the river dazzle out between the open fields, where it 
made its sharp western bend around the town. It is 
a great thing to look away. Between brick walls, 
sorrows pin one down, and grind and gnaw one’s life. 
It is so natural, when things go wrong indoors, to sit 
and look out of a window, — if the window looks any- 
where. You think that you are sulky or miserable, 
— perhaps you mean to be, at first ; but presently you 
have gotten all over it. You have gone out from your- 
self, away off among tree branches and cloud islands, 
carrying your trouble with you, and there you give it 
the slip, and leave it to melt away. 

I felt calm and bright again in five minutes, sitting 
there by Mrs. Cope, listening to her friendly words 
contrived to call for little answer, and linking their 
pleasantness dreamily with every pleasant color and 
motion and form upon which my vision lingered. 

“And now about the bonnet,” she began again, just 
at a nice moment, when nobody was particularly look- 
ing. “Can’t we have it off? or what is the diffi- 
culty ? ” 

I began at the right end now. “I might take it 
off, I suppose ; but I wanted to tell you first. Aunt 
Ildy sent her compliments, and said I might stay for 
an hour or so, but that it would n’t be convenient to 
spare me till after tea.” 

“Perhaps it was the sending for you? I thought 
of that, and meant to manage it. It ought to have 
been mentioned. I can send down a message now to 


HITHERTO, 


126 

Miss Chism, and tell her we ’ll take care of you if she 
will allow you to stay. We shall drive out after tea, 
and we can bring you round on our way home.” 

“Oh, thank you, Mrs. Cope, hut, indeed — please 
not! I ’m sure Aunt Ildy meant me to come home.” 

“Then we won’t say another word,” said Mrs. 
Cope, with the truest kindness; “hut make the most 
of our hour, and manage better next time.” 

There was a whole world of consolation for me in 
those last two words. 

They got it all into that hour, I think. They had 
the bagatelle board brought out on the terrace, — 
croquet was a thing to come in the after years, — and 
we played the game with the bridge, as easiest for a 
beginner. Allard and his mother and I sided together 
against the Miss Copes and Augusta. We played nine 
rounds, and came out a hundred and fifty ahead. 
Allard said I made wonderful strokes. I thought I 
had wonderful luck, and was delighted not to spoil 
their side of the game. 

Then they would have raspberries and cream, and 
delicious little almond cakes for me ; the best part of 
the tea that I could not stay for; and then Allard 
gathered me some flowers, and when I put on my 
gloves and bade good-by, he said it was time for the 
mail, and he would walk down with me and bring 
home his mother’s letters. 

It was their beautiful way of entertaining, I know; 
everybody found it delightful at the Copes’ ; and they 
were kindly sorry for my embarrassment and disap- 
pointment, and so turned it all into the greater if the 
shorter pleasure ; somebody else came in, very likely, 
as soon as I had gone, and was just as solicitously 
attended to ; but it made me feel as nothing but Rich- 
ard Hathaway’s and his mother’s kindness had ever 
made me feel before ; as if ’ people cared for me to be 


WHAT ANSTISS DOLE E ABE REMEMBERS. 127 


happy ; and I might, if but for a little while, be made 
the principal thing. I thought what it must be to 
have a life full of such care, and how some people had 
it, and some not. And then there was the walk down- 
hill and up into the town with Allard. 

I felt a little pleasant tingle of pride, when we met 
some of the school-girls on the bridge, and he lifted 
his cap because I bowed to them. I could tell by the 
sound of their steps that they turned to look after they 
had passed us. It was a great thing to come upon 
Aunt Ildy at the street door, just going in from an 
errand, and to have her see him shake hands with me, 
and give me the flowers, which he had carried all the 
way, and hear him say he was sorry I could not have 
made a longer visit. I think I took on a kind of self- 
possession and elegance myself, being treated so; and 
that my parting bow and thanks had a South Side air 
that Aunt Ildy’s lacked. 

I took off my blue muslin, and put on my brown 
calico, and got my stocking basket, and sat down till 
tea was ready. I had been so happy that it was easy 
to be very good. I forgot all that had seemed hard 
and cruel, and looked upon it quite in a new light. I 
even tried to get some sympathy from Aunt Ildy in 
a pleasure that would not altogether be laid aside in 
silence. Or, rather, my pleasure so overflowed, like 
the little brook into which a generous rain has poured, 
that it made a glad little ripple over the very rock 
that hemmed it in. 

^‘I had a beautiful time,” I said. “Mrs. Cope 
was so good! And I think it was very nice of Allard 
to come home with me.” 

“The Copes are very polite,” replied the rock; 
“and your Uncle Royle has always been thought a good 
deal of. Mr. Cope sits and talks with him in his lit- 
tle room about their books and politics. But I guess 


128 


HITHERTO. 


I would n’t call that young man by his Christian name, 
if I were you. ” 

How absurd I had been, and how ashamed I was ! 
Those few words of Aunt Ildy’s, and the tone of 
them, laid bare, and touched to wincing, possible and 
half-comprehended things ; that which perhaps was in 
me, and perhaps was not, hut of which 1 was certainly 
not conscious till her dry rebuke covertly accused me. 
Foolishly raised conceit, presumption, forwardness, 
and something more, undefined, — unwarranted and 
ridiculous also, — a claim of familiarity, as if Allard 
Cope were anything, especially, to me! “That young 
man ! ” I did not know that I had thought of him as 
a young man before ; he was only one of a delightful 
family, the nearest to my own age, who had shown 
me a graceful friendliness. Then I remembered the 
girls upon the bridge; and I analyzed my feeling 
there ; I blushed as I questioned if it had been quite 
free from silliness, and all the quick sensitiveness of 
fifteen shamed me before my own self- judgment, pro- 
voked to harshness by Aunt Ildy’s blunt reproof. 

In the midst of it all, though, I could not help 
secretly wishing that she could have known what he 
really said; that “I was such a pretty girl! ” I made 
up my mind distinctly, however, that I would not call 
him “Allard” anymore; that to Aunt Ildy I would 
not speak about the Copes at all. 

They must have talked it over at South Side ; and 
Augusta must have told them something ; for the next 
thing that happened was a regular coup d* Hat. 

Mr. Cope himself rode up to the office door one 
morning, and as a boy brought out his letters, he 
begged that Mr. Chism would come to him a moment. 

I was getting out fresh linen from the chest of 
drawers in the front room above, and the windows 
were up, and the green blinds closed. I just heard 


WHAT ANSTISS DOLBEARE REMEMBERS. 129 


the sound of their voices, at first, but I caught dis- 
tinctly Mr. Cope's last words. 

“Mrs. Cope has quite set her heart upon it; she has 
taken a great fancy to your little niece ; she will call 
this afternoon, and ask Miss Chism.” 

It was not natural to me to be secret and politic ; 
it went hard. If I had had a dear mother, pleased 
with my pleasure, sure to allow all that was right and 
good for me, I should have run to her directly with 
this wonderful hint that I had heard; and I think she 
would have helped me in my hopes and guesses; but 
before Aunt Ildy I closed my mouth, and waited. I 
changed the bureau-covers and pillow-cases as she had 
bidden me ; I sat down quietly to my sewing ; by and 
by I laid the table for dinner, it being baking-day, 
and Lucretia busy. I was unusually silent, and I 
hardly dared let my eyes meet Aunt Ildy’s; I knew 
they would have sparkled if I did, and if I had opened 
my lips I should have sung. 

Uncle Royle came in rather early, and told the 
whole before me. He did not know much of how 
things went on upstairs; he lived so in the store and 
office, and in his little room behind. 

Mrs. Cope was intending to call on Aunt Ildy, and 
ask leave for me to come to them next week, and stay 
Thursday and Friday. The young ladies would have 
some younger cousins to entertain, — girls of my own 
age, — and would be obliged if I would come and help. 
There was not a large neighborhood then at South Side, 
and there was not swift communication far and near, 
as there is now. It had. been in this way the Copes 
had used to come down for the Edgells. 

“I suppose she can go,” said Uncle Royle. “I told 
Mr. Cope so, and I think she ’d better. It is a very 
particular attention. You’d like it, wouldn’t you, 
Anstiss? It will do you good. There’s never any 


130 


HITHERTO, 


harm in getting what one can of good society; and 
you don’t have many pleasurings.” 

“ I think you are very kind, Uncle Royle ! ” I an- 
swered, letting my grateful pleasure brim and tremble 
over in eye and voice. “May I, Aunt Ildy? ” 

I am afraid she felt almost insulted by this form of 
deference ; but I could not help it ; I must ask her ; it 
would have been worse if I had not. 

“ It seems to be all settled, ” she replied grimly. 

“ Oh, yes, ” said Uncle Royle, taking her innocently 
at her word. “Since you don’t know of anything to 
prevent; and I supposed you could n’t.” Uncle Royle 
did not see much, to be sure ; but he had lived with 
Aunt Ildy all his life, and it is possible that in a sim- 
ple way he was now and then inspired. 

“I don’t know what she ’s got to wear,” Aunt Ildy 
remarked. 

“There’s time enough,’’ said Uncle Royle. “If 
she wants a new gown, let her have it. I ’ll tell you 
what, Annie, you and I ’ll go shopping together this 
afternoon, while Aunt Ildy talks it over with Mrs. 
Cope.” 

It did not occur to Uncle Royle very often to in- 
terest himself directly in the plans and personal wants 
of people ; when he did begin, he seemed to wake up 
to it as to a pleasure that he had been rather clever in 
discovering, and that was of easier attainment than he 
had supposed. He always went on from one thing to 
more. 

“Your Uncle Royle says so and so,” — “Your Uncle 
Royle thinks best ; ” these were often very decisive 
words in Aunt Ildy’s mouth to me; therefore, when 
he said so and so in my presence, or thought best to 
do anything thus out of his own head, she had the 
consistency not to actively oppose. But I think she 
felt herself circumvented. 


WHAT ANSTISS DOLBEABE REMEMBERS. 131 


Uncle Royle bought me a green and white narrow- 
striped silk, and told Mr. Norcross he might put up 
the “ trimmings ” with it ; the construction of which 
order was such that besides the cambric and linen and 
sewing-silk and hooks and eyes, there came home with 
the parcel two yards of ribbon and a yard and a half 
of thread lace. The whole cost thirteen dollars and 
a half ; it was in the good old times when six yards 
made a skirt, and a pretty summer silk cost but a dol- 
lar a yard. I wonder everybody did not wear silk 
then; that, however, was reserved for the days of sev- 
enty-dollar dresses, that we have come to now. Now, 
it is something worth while, and everybody brings it 
to pass. Cook-maids, in consequence, get their four 
dollars a week. 

It seemed to me, then, a grand outlay; I thought I 
was provided like a princess. Truly there was some 
poetry coming for me at last. It was like Miss Aus- 
ten’s heroines going to London and Bath, to see the 
rich, gay world. I was just old enough to fancy that 
I might have fallen upon the title-page of my romance. 
Two days were an enormous time ! 

Aunt Ildy measured and pieced; did her duty by 
the silk dress now that it was bought ; and her duty 
was never done until a piecing was got in somehow. 

I ran the breadths, and covered bits of piping-cord; 
then I was set at turning some old sheets, to keep my 
mind down to usefulness and everyday ; meanwhile my 
fancy was living those two glorified days at South Side, 
and crowding them with all possibilities of delight 
until they became a golden age of gladness. Years 
lay between me, already, and yesterday morning when 
the green and white silk dress was begun. Kept down 
to commonplace ? Every stitch in the old sheet was a 
grapple upon some fairy chain of imagination by which 
I climbed and climbed out of this everyday of mine 


132 


HITHERTO. 


into an illimitable paradise. They were magic hours, 
and it was the bean-stalk of the story, — a common 
work done under a kitchen window, from which some- 
thing grew and reached up until it touched the clouds. 
Up and down its flowering path I traveled. Aunt 
Ildy looked after the village dressmaker and her pieces 
and her threads of sewing-silk; she thought me under 
a wholesome domestic discipline. Well, one half the 
world doesn’t know what the other half is about, even 
when it has got it under eye and thumb. 

The Copes came for me on Wednesday just before 
tea. I had on my blue dress ; the new silk, and a 
purple - striped calico for mornings, were in Uncle 
Royle’s old-fashioned black portmanteau, with some 
clean collars and pocket-handkerchiefs, and my night- 
things ; and the key was in my pocket. I was mistress 
of all this for two days; only the invisible restraint of 
Aunt Ildy’s admonitions and expectations went with 
me. That hangs about me to this day. I feel the 
old habitual twitch at my acquired conscience, every 
time I put on a fresh lace recklessly, or wear my best 
gloves, because the second-best have a rip in the finger. 

Can I ever forget the exquisite pleasure it was to 
me when they put me in possession of that room up in 
the west wing over the garden? Only for two nights’ 
sleeping and two days’ dressing; and it was so much 
to me, such a beginning, that troubled itself with no 
end, and that I must fain linger over now, while the 
story of years in the after life awaits to be remem- 
bered ! This is the way, though, that we do remem- 
ber. Point after point, as we find out its full mean- 
ing, perhaps, will all our life come back to us one day 
in like manner, when everything shall be great and 
full, measured by no moments of time, or any earthly 
comparison, but only by its relation to what has been 
in and from ourselves through its experience. 


WHAT ANSTISS DOLBEABE REMEMBEBS. 133 

Place is so much to us. To me, at least, it always 
was : from the seat at school to the home one makes 
between four walls somewhere, long afterward ; and all 
the lesser and transient abidings that come between! 
The corner in a stage-coach for a day’s ride over the 
hills, or the better perch upon the springing roof ; the 
window in a rail-car; the state-room in a steamer; 
the nook in God’s house that is our own, and where 
we can always pray and listen best ; the earth under the 
trees of a cemetery, or on the sunny slope of a simple 
graveyard, where we shall lie down at last ! The best 
promise for the beyond is a “place ” for us there, also. 

All this from the thought of that pretty summer 
room into which the linden - trees rustled, and the 
breath of the white lilies came up from below. 

The four corners were cut off, turning it into an 
octagon, and making little triangular closets and arched 
recesses before which curtains hung. In one of these 
last was the quaint little half-circular toilet, and the 
tilted round mirror above it, the draperies always 
looped back from before them ; everything in the room 
was of an antique grace, and made one think of the 
maidenhood of a past generation that had dwelt and 
decked itself here, and been beautiful in the old-time 
fashion. In another stood the washing-stand, a won- 
derful little airy tripod, running up to hold a china 
basin in a light, polished rim of some dark, rich wood, 
while below, between the supports, was just a solid 
round big enough for the slender ewer. Beside, a 
towel-stand, tall and narrow, its three rods only as 
wide each as the folded damask that hung from it 
gleaming with glossy, delicate diaper of vine and 
clover-leaves. Above, tiny triangular shelves, with 
all the rest of the service and appliance needed. 

I just stood still a minute and clapped my hands, 
when I was left alone. My pleasure was as full as if 


134 


HITHEBTO, 


I were to call it all mine from that time always. And 
why not? It has been ever since. You cannot “give 
and take away again,” into and from a life. 

I heard Allard Cope go whistling down the stairs as 
I smoothed my hair. I heard a door open and a gay 
young voice, one of the cousins’, call to him and stop 
him. Then there were some little teasing words and 
questions, and a laugh, about something that had hap- 
pened, or been foretold, or promised and forgotten, I 
forget what, — only a bit out of the life of a happy 
house into which I was coming, — and then presently 
steps returned toward my door, and Laura Cope came 
in to take me down to tea. Those two minutes, 
again, were not minutes. In them I entered into and 
enjoyed something that opened toward a rich and end- 
less knowledge and duration. 

They introduced me to Grace and Sarah Braithley, 
and gave me a seat between Augusta Hare and Sarah. 
Grandon Cope and his father came in from a ride as 
we sat down to our late, twilight tea. Grandon had 
a branch of wild blossoms for his mother, that he came 
up to lay beside her plate. He leaned over her close 
as he did so, and she looked up at him with a lovely 
light in her eye. Mrs. Cope was beautiful with her 
sons. I learned first from her what a full grace mo- 
therhood has ; how a woman only comes to her whole, 
rich fairness then, when the years sit upon her like a 
crown, and a love devotes itself to her that has grown 
up out of her own life and stands beside it now, no 
chance comer, but its very own, its perfecting and re- 
ward. I think the purest tenderness, the most chival- 
rous attending she can ever have, comes to her so ; and 
that no trick or grace of early youth, no coquettish 
queening of it in girl’s beauty, can compare with the ra- 
diance and the winsome dignity that are upon her then. 

The Copes were English in their origin and connec- 


WHAT ANSTISS BOLBEARE REMEMBERS. 135 


tion. Grandon had just come home from Cambridge, 
where he had been sent for his university education; 
the whole family was making much of him, and the 
neighborhood looked on admiringly. After this sum- 
mer stay he was going abroad again with his father, 
to visit the continent, perhaps to remain and pursue 
some scientific taste he had in Germany. But his 
mother claimed him first, and he came all across the 
water, — a wearier way than now, — to bring her his 
fresh honors and his affectionate duty. 

Grandon began again the little bantering with Al- 
lard, and brought his cousins upon him afresh. There 
was such a charm to me in this little sportive justle 
and antagonism between people who could afford, out 
of their wealth of heart-kindliness and true courtesy, 
to affect it for the fun of the moment, in which some- 
thing half-serious was affectionately hid ! To be taken 
to task with a jest was such a different thing from the 
grinding earnest I was used to, — the fault-finding so 
real, so depressing, and down-holding! Allard main- 
tained his own, and answered back with an adroitness 
that turned the tables, and brought the laugh — as 
genial as before — with him instead of against him. 
Even his father would let himself be conquered by a 
repartee, such as, if I had ventured upon it with Aunt 
Ildy, would have been very nearly the end of all 
things. What was daring and defiant in me was the 
mere play and grace of life here among these happy 
children whose life had been allowed to grow. One 
good, perhaps, was meant by both methods. It was 
only the difference of ways. But to me it was all the 
difference between the branching growth kept nailed 
and trained against the wall, and the free tossing of 
green boughs in a gay, sunny orchard. Wall-fruit 
may be good ; some natures might never bear, perhaps, 
in other fashion. But I like the free flavor best. 


136 


HITHERTO. 


It was only the family party to-night; to-morrow 
there would be company at dinner and in the evening. 

We all sat out on the terrace in the moonlight. I 
got as near to Mrs. Cope as I could. Sitting there, 
with the folds of her soft muslin dress lying lightly 
over and against mine, — she wore the prettiest dress 
to-night, figured with the tiniest old-fashioned sprigs 
of pale pinks, and round the hem and about the wrists 
just a narrow bit of ruffle of the same, that looked so 
delicate and ladylike, so just like her, and in her belt, 
in the sweet, old, simple way, a nosegay, — I dreamed 
a sort of dream, thinking out a picture of a life such 
as might have been for me if Mrs. Cope, or anybody 
like her, had been my mother. 

The faint image I had in my mind of a mother, 
gathered vaguely from dim association with all that 
had belonged to my own, and that was laid away in 
the high bureau in the front room at Miss Chism’s, — 
was of something just so nice and delicate and sweetly 
pure, accompanied with some faint, never-absent, 
clinging sense of fragrance about all she wore; not 
just perfumed, but taken out of careful folds from 
some drawer where rose-leaves had lain, and other 
sweet- smelling things had long ago been dropped 
among laces and linens, till all the old wood was full 
of a rare, gentle odor that would never leave it any 
more. And the repose and sweetness and perfumed 
grace of courtesy about Mrs. Cope were something 
like these also, and seemed as if they could fittingly 
array themselves in no other sort of outward vesture. 
Nothing new, just bought at the shops, and poured 
as a false, obtrusive anointing, about a common life, 
but an old ingrained sweetness of real roses that had 
been gathered long ago. The very word “mother,” 
learned among fair relics, and beside gentle lives like 
this and Mrs. Hathaway’s, sounded and savored of 


WHAT ANSTISS BOLBEARE REMEMBERS. 137 


such things to me. If Miss Chism had been any- 
body’s mother — But that could never have been. 
Thank God, I never saw anything of motherhood but 
the beauty of it ! So I know it the better, perhaps, 
— as we learn many things in this life that is only a 
life of types, — from having missed it. 

Sarah Braithley proposed some quiet games that 
were new things then; games of intellect, such as I 
always liked. The Cope girls drew me out, and the 
soft, shielding moonlight and their mother beside me 
made me brave, and I took my part with delight. 
We grew merry over them, and I made quick answers, 
and everybody laughed, and I got excited, and I think 
I was rather brilliant for a child. Something, at any 
rate, always popped into my head when my turn came, 
and it got so at last that they rather hurried round to 
me to see what I would say; and sometimes one of 
them, in a puzzle, would make me find a reason or a 
word for them. Mr. Cope would say “Brava! ” and 
they would all give a well-bred little musical shout 
of laughter together at some of my sallies. Allard 
tossed the hard things toward me, and seemed espe- 
cially proud when I succeeded. I think Allard always 
took to himself credit in these days for having found 
me out first, and behaved as if I somehow belonged 
to him particularly, by right of discovery. We were 
very jolly friends, and I was not a bit afraid of him ; 
but I fairly trembled with a sort of scared triumph 
when Mr. Grandon Cope, who was so old and such a 
scholar, and of such consequence, joined in the glee 
and applause, and gave me special questions to try me. 
The idea of my surprising or amusing him ! It 
seemed stranger to do this with him than with his fa- 
ther. Old gentlemen, somehow, are always kind and 
easily pleased; or else they are people just to be let 
alone, and there is the end of it. 


138 


HITHERTO. 


I could be a little saucy, even, with Mr. Cope, for 
lie patted me on the shoulder, and I knew I was only 
a little child to him. But Grandon treated me just 
as he did Augusta Hare, and it was something real 
and startling when he turned over his part in the game 
to me, and watched in earnest to see what I would 
make of it. It was only out of curiosity and for 
greater sport, of course; he could have answered all 
the questions if he had tried ; but he gave up all effort 
deliberately at last, and came round behind his mo- 
ther and me, and handed them regularly, as it were, 
over my shoulder, with, “Now?” “Miss Anstiss, 
why is it?” or, “Why do I ? I ’m sure I don’t 
know. ” , 

He had a “thought” himself, at last, in “What is 
my Thought like ? ” And I told him it was like the 
toothache. At which, before his thought was de- 
clared, he laughed immoderately. 

“I ’m afraid it is — to you,” he said; “but you ’ll 
have to tell me why. I thought of my stupidity. 
Now?” 

“Because,” I answered, in a very serious, tired 
way, “what can’t be cured must be endured.” 

I had actually been saucy with him ! I felt myself 
burn all over, as soon as I had said it, and a sort of 
horrible vision of Aunt Ildy and her day-of- judgment 
face rushed up before me. 

“I couldn’t help it,” I stammered out. “It was 
all the answer there was.” 

“ Of course it was ! ” he cried, and the second shout 
of laughter was more explosive than the first. Be- 
tween the two I seemed to hear my little, blundering 
excuse dropping like an absurd echo. I could not play 
any more. Myself, measured by Aunt Ildy’s estima- 
tion, stood, like a mean reality to shame my counter- 
feit, in the way of my new self-possession and bril- 


WHAT ANSTISS BOLBEARE REMEMBERS. 139 


liancy. As the Copes treated me, I had been raised 
to a higher and more happily assured sort of self ; or, 
rather, I had not thought about myself, exactly, at all. 
In bright, pleasant exercise, when every muscle moves 
with a gladness, one does not think about the body. 
The physical life goes into the thing one is doing. 
Mental life works so too, sometimes. I think I had 
often been least conscious of myself when, as I fan- 
cied, afterward, my secondary conscience coming up, 
I had been most forward. 

They saw that I had frightened myself; and per- 
haps they thought they had not been quite fair; I 
know they had really liked it, and had not been mak- 
ing fun of me, though I knew with the terrible insight 
that always haunted me and superinduced that state 
of conscience, that it was what Miss Chism would 
say ; but they understood at once now ; and they let 
the game drop, in a sort of glory to me, too, as if 
there was nothing more to be said after that; only 
Mr. Cope would now and then break out into a little 
after laugh of his own, as if he could not quite get 
over it. Grandon and Mrs. Cope talked on with me 
a good while about a good many things. Nobody 
hushed up, or stopped suddenly, seeming as if they 
were shocked, or could imagine that they were sup- 
posed to be. It was so nice to be among people of 
nice perceptions. 

Mrs. Cope kissed me when she said good-night. 
The soft lace lappet of her little cap touched my 
cheek, and that delicate, nameless odor of things 
exquisitely cared for came with my breath for an 
instant, and the word “mother” was in my heart 
again. 

Augusta Hare went up when I did, and Grandon 
Cope gave us our candles, and held open the door for 
us. 


140 


HITHEBTO. 


It was an altogether different thing, and yet some- 
how it put me in mind of the good-nights at the farm, 
and Richard Hathaway lighting a little lamp for me 
with a coal from the fireplace, and the going from the 
warm kitchen into the little press-room where I slept 
so safe. Was it so different? Or only the same sweet 
tune played in a different key? 

I lay awake for a time that seemed like hours. I 
suppose it might really have been one. My young 
brain was all awhirl with high excitement ; it would 
not stop when the evening ended, hut went on and on, 
over and over, with it all, in marvelous flashes of 
repetition. 

Augusta Hare had said to me when she went away, 
“You got on famously, only don’t break down in the 
midst again, as if you were a sort of Cinderella, and 
it had struck twelve.” 

That was just it. A fairy godmother gave me a 
beautiful dress, and lent me a hit of a beautiful life ; 
I could forget myself in it for a while ; but something 
jarred, and I was back in what I had lived in so long ; 
a sort of meanness and rags. I believe that is what 
the old fable means. 

Yet the rags were the false things. How is it that 
they cling to people so ? 

I went to sleep at last, and dreamed that everybody 
at South Side was out on the terrace, fitting on glass 
shoes; nobody’s would go on but mine; and then 
everybody brought theirs to me, and I slipped my foot 
into every one ; and they all shouted and applauded, 
and brought me heaps and heaps ; till — crack ! away 
went one into shivers that Grandon Cope stood offer- 
ing me, and at the same moment a great bell, with 
Aunt Ildy’s eyes looking out of it, swung over my 
head, and seemed to crash through me as if I, too, 
were made of glass and shivering to splinters; and 


WHAT ANSTISS DOLBEAEE REMEMBERS, 141 


then there was nothing left but my little old self in a 
dreadful bonnet that Miss Chism had pinned up with 
faded ribbons and broken straw, and I had a great 
rent in my dress, and my feet in shabby shoes, and 
Richard Hathaway came and led me away. 


CHAPTER X. 


ON THE HOUSETOP. 

Next morning we all — we girls, I mean — went 
down the garden and away into the lane after flowers 
and vines for the tables and baskets and vases. In 
the garden we got roses and white lilies, gay scarlet 
geraniums and great purple velvet pansies, and sprays 
of light vines, cypress, and creeping myrtle; in the 
lane that ran with its banks of shade all along against 
the garden foot we found wealth of clematis and wild 
woodbine. Then we came back and made the house 
a bower. We sat in the long, cool hall, and cut our 
wreaths and assorted our clusters, and flitted back and 
forth, putting them about in the rooms ; and then we 
gathered up the refuse into a wide basket, and a house- 
maid carried it off, and brushed up every scrap from 
the white India matting ; and nobody was put out, and 
it seemed as if no labor had been done, or any “clut- 
ter ” — that bugbear of Aunt Ildy’s stern housekeep- 
ing — had been made. Things seemed to work out 
and fall into order in this house, as I suppose they 
must in the kingdom of heaven. 

Afterward, we had a long morning in Mrs. Cope’s 
room. 

When I think of these times, I remember every lit- 
tle detail, and I cannot help dwelling upon them all 
and living them over. They were so much to me. 
They made an atmosphere of living into which I can 
seem to go hack with the thought of them. Things 
have this power with me that impress me at all. 
Books do it; and people whose experience I have 


ON THE HOUSETOP. 


143 


entered into by a sympathy that had its root often in 
the longing of my nature for the same. A breath of 
pleasantness across the commonest day of my own liv- 
ing, a puff of summer air even, or the smell of a pink, 
or the clearing up after a shower, will bring up a 
subtle essence of all these things to me, th^ spirit of 
which I have been gathering from here and there, even 
while the letter was denied me. I am old enough now 
to have learned that we don’t want the letter half the 
time. It is true in this way also, that it sometimes 
killeth. It is the spirit only which giveth life. The 
world is but a show of things ; a kindergarten, where 
we learn by object-lessons. It is only the very little 
ones to whom the object is all. 

Augusta dressed my hair for dinner, in quite a 
grown-up style, making a long French twist of it, and 
gathering the ends of that which she parted at the 
front in clusters of little curls, to fall behind my ears*. 
She put a white rose with green leaves against the 
coil of the twist at the side, and a few buds and 
leaves, for a breast knot, upon the lace which fell over 
my silk dress from around my throat. Her own hair 
was done in a low round coil behind, and carried back 
from the front in wide-looped, heavy braids, in which 
she had woven some white cypress blossoms that looked 
like little stars. 

I had never been at a regular dinner before. It 
was like a feast served in the “Arabian Nights.” 
The still coming and going of the servants, the noise- 
less changing of plates and dishes, the delicate gar- 
nishings, the simplicity of the elegance that made even 
me feel in five minutes as if it were such a matter of 
course, and a thing I had so long been used to, — all 
this was different from any “having company” that I 
ever saw before. 

With Aunt Ildy “company ” was a kind of a fever. 


144 


HITHERTO. 


From the baking of the cake to the getting out of the 
best china, it was a succession of crises ; and there was 
no knowing what turn any of them would take. We 
stopped living beforehand, and took it up again when 
the company was gone. The interval was an abnor- 
mal condition. Here, into a beautiful, established 
living, friends came, and that was all. In this again 
there was a strange reminder, even with a contrast, of 
Hathaway Farm. There you “dropped in, laid off 
your things, and stayed ; ” and everything was always 
ready. So people borrowed a little freshness from 
each other, and got really something out of each 
other’s sphere and story. In the other fashion, “tak- 
ing tea out” was being out; you got into nobody’s 
home; one place was like another; you might as well 
go and sit upon a fence between your fields. 

Allard Cope sat by me at the table ; and when we 
left the dining-room and scattered ourselves in the 
hall and library and drawing-room while cups of tea 
and coffee were being carried about, he took me out on 
the broad front steps, and the other younger ones came 
too, and we sat there chatting and laughing in the 
soft dusk that was rather a glow between the fullness 
of day and the night-radiance that was coming. 

Mr. Grandon Cope had gone up into a little room 
that was his in the half- story in the roof. He had a 
telescope here, and a flight of steps ran up through a 
skylight window to the flat centre of the housetop. 
He was going to take out and fix his instrument, and 
show us by and by the conjunction of Jupiter and the 
moon. 

“ If you like, that is, ” said Allard carelessly, tell- 
ing us. “I don’t think I ’m anxious. The planets 
can take care of themselves; they ’re pretty sure to be 
in the right places; I ’d as lief take Gran’s and the 
almanac’s word for it, and look after the conjunctions 
down here,” 


ON THE HOUSETOP. 


145 


Allard was not a bit like Grandon; he was clever 
enough, and he would always be a gentleman; he 
would have that nameless grace of society that shapes 
one’s orbit in it and makes it bright and wide; he 
would be satisfied with this, and leave, as he said, the 
planets and such matters to take care of themselves. 

But the crown of a man’s manhood to me is some 
insight or authority or knowledge that puts him above 
the ordinary plane of everyday things; he must take 
hold somewhere, spiritually or intellectually, upon the 
things of God. 

There was a great chair-swing in one of the lindens, 
in which two of us could sit together; we went out to 
it presently, and Allard sent Sarah Braithley and me 
tossing up into the branches. 

We stayed here under the deep boughs, taking our 
turns in the swing, till it grew quite dark in the shad- 
ows ; darker than we had thought it would be on this 
bright night, though there was an hour yet before 
moonrise. The wind was coming up, too, stronger, 
out of the south. 

Before we thought of going in, it had got to be so 
that there was only the gleam of our light dresses to 
see each other by. The great tree, arching down on 
every side to the deep grass, made a mysterious gloom, 
into which we could seem to look as into an immense 
distance where light lost itself. Swinging out toward 
the verge, we saw the bright house-lights twinkle sud- 
denly, and then go out as we dropped back into the 
thick shade. 

There were only Kitty Cope, the Braithleys, and I. 
Augusta and Laura were singing in the drawing-room. 

Suddenly, across the music, there came a deep, low 
roll, and the quick leaves rustled with a wind that ran 
sharply through them. 

“I felt a drop upon my foot. It rains!” cried 


146 


HITHERTO . 


Kitty, out of the swing, coming back from a long 
flight. 

Allard caught the chair-frame, and ran after it as 
it swept on in a fresh vibration, bringing it back with 
him to a stop. The two girls slid out, and we all 
started for the house. Before we got there, there 
came a streak of quick flame across the darkness, and 
a peal of near thunder smote the air. Great drops 
began to fall. A cloud had rushed up out of the hot 
southwest, where flickers of heat-lightning had been 
playing, and hung above us; only the heavy border 
rolled up n‘ow, against the dim-lighted east. Just as 
we sprang upon the bank, somebody shut the hall 
door. They were pulling down sashes hastily, all 
around, inside, and running up and down as people do 
in a great, open house when a summer storm comes up. 
Nobody thought of our being out. Whoever came to 
the door saw no one on the broad porch or steps, and 
there it was fast with a catch-lock. Allard pulled the 
bell, but the servants were upstairs shutting bedroom 
windows now, and whoever else heard it may have 
fancied it a summons only to some fresh point within. 

“We might as well run round,” he said; and we 
all turned, at first, to go with him. But the path 
among the trees around the whole front half part and 
wing was something to undertake, with great drops 
driving faster, and the lightning quivering overhead. 
I was afraid of the storm, and — I remembered my 
new silk dress. “Green would run,” I had heard 
Aunt Ildy say when it came home. So I stopped 
short, and waited, standing close up in the shelter of 
the door. I knew they would let me in when they got 
round. 

But they did not miss me at the first, when they 
all ran in together from the terrace and mingled with 
the rest, thinking that I of course had followed. 


ON THE HOUSETOP. 


147 


I had time, all alone, to see a fearful blaze, to hear 
a close hissing, and a crash, a splintering down through 
something, and an explosion that enveloped all. I 
had time, after that, to ring vehemently and to call, 
and to fling myself against the door with a frantic 
feeling that I must, somehow, get behind it, — put it 
between me and the storm. And then Grandon Cope 
opened it, and I fell forward, and he caught me up 
and lifted me in. 

“You poor child! ” he exclaimed, amazed and com- 
miserating. “How in the name of wonder came you 
there ? ” 

And after that he took care of me all the evening. 

Augusta Hare was by his side as he opened the 
door. She told the story afterward better than ever 
I could, and made more of it. Her sensation of the 
shock, her belief that the house itself was struck, the 
sudden pealing of the bell, and the falling of some- 
thing against the door, and their pulling me in, half 
senseless, so that she thought at first glimpse of me 
that I was killed : you saw the picture, as you always 
did, from her standpoint, and she was better than the 
foreground. I had my fright and my dim recollection 
of an instant alone with the storm ; but I had nothing 
to tell. It was an old poplar-tree, across the road, 
that had been struck. It was the first time in my life 
that I had felt how near the terrible element might 
come. It was not to he the last. 

Grandon Cope took care of me all the evening. I 
don’t mean that he held me in his arms, or sat by 
my side; Augusta did these things; hut he came and 
went, with something to show me, or a word to say 
that reassured me, every little while. There were 
other things to do, too. Other guests were terrified ; 
were anxious about their drives home, and their horses ; 
the storm continued, close and sharp about us, for an 


148 


bithehto. 


hour. Amusement and conversation were given up; 
people only watched the keen returning flashes, and 
listened for the hope of longer intervals between them 
and the reverberations that shook the building. 

I shrank and trembled at every one, but I said no- 
thing. I was too strengthless with dread for a while 
to cry out as others did, or to ask questions. It was 
the more thoughtful in Grandon Cope to soothe me 
so, and to help me gradually to a reasonable sort of 
courage; even, at last, to a positive enjoyment, in 
what would else have stamped itself irretrievably upon 
my young nerves as a terror never to he conquered. 

“There is very little fear,” he said, standing by 
the arm of the sofa, as a long, fierce rattle died away ; 
“the biggest of us only furnishes six feet or so of con- 
ducting power; it will always get hold of something 
better when it can. Just see that you don’t make 
yourself a link in a chain; that is all you have to do.” 

If he had said there was no danger, it would not 
have comforted me at all; but the “very little” and 
the reason why, — these helped me to my first long 
breath. 

“ I was up on the roof when it began ; I had my 
telescope to bring down. I ’m sorry our astronomy 
was spoiled to-night.” 

“ Oh, I wanted so to look through the telescope ! ” I 
cried, remembering my anticipations, and that I must 
go home to-morrow. 

“There may be a chance yet. It ’s only a bit of 
a cloud in the way. When you think of the stars 
waiting just the same beyond, it seems a very little 
fizz, does n’t it ? ” 

“Perhaps it does,” I said. “But then, we are 
very little; ever so much littler, you know; and we 
are right in the fizz ! ” 

Mr. Cope laughed. 


ON THE HOUSETOP. 


149 


“Think of something yet less, then. Think of all 
the little birds in their nests; and how they will sing, 
hundreds of them, when the sun comes up to-morrow 
morning. ” 

“Ah, that’s a comfort,” said I, my long breath 
going out with a sigh. I did not think of it then, 
and I don’t know whether he did, but I have remem- 
bered it since; that it was the very comfort Christ 
gave us himself. “Not a sparrow falleth; ” and “Ye 
are of more value than many sparrows.” He trans- 
lated God’s special words to us, written in his crea- 
tion; and they always stand. 

“It is better to face it,” Mr. Cope said, coming 
again by and by. “Then you know where it really 
is, and what it is about. When it is just overhead, 
you can’t, of course; but that seldom comes, and 
never lasts long; and it ’s no use to sit fancying it 
overhead. Come this way with me, won’t you? 
We ’ll watch it off.” 

He led us — Augusta came too — into the library, 
and pulled seats for us into the great bay-window. 
The blinds were all open, — I believe he had been in 
and set them so on purpose, — and away toward the 
north the mass of cloud was drifting, and showed it- 
self to us by rosy sheets and golden chainwork of gor- 
geous lightnings that illumined and embroidered it. 

“It is the purple lightning that is dangerous,” 
Augusta said. “When it grows red like that, it is 
passing over.” 

“The distance changes the effect. The close blaze 
is livid and blinding. Look! ” 

Overlapping edges of great banks of piled-up vapor 
were grandly shown by sudden darting flames that 
seemed to run along their curves, and bury themselves 
behind the bosom of blackness. Back and forth, each 
to each, they flashed their magnificent telegraphy, and 


150 


HITHEBTO. 


between them rolled the incessant voice of thunders. 
All around the mid-sky and the horizon, settling mo- 
mently lower, and wheeling northward, lay the reced- 
ing showers; while here, about us, only a few great 
drops, flashing from roof and branches, came from 
overhead. Yet the bright gleams shone vivid across 
the night, and the echoing peals swelled now and then 
to sudden crashes. 

“I told you this was better,” said Grandon Cope. 
“Half of them in the other rooms think we are in the 
midst of it still.” 

“You see the chief of the business lies between 
themselves, after all,” he said again, reaching his 
hand toward the heaping clouds making their daz- 
zling interchanges. “There is the whole heaven to 
sweep through; and, at the worst, hundreds of ob- 
jects beside one’s self in the little radius it may most 
threaten.” 

“I never can realize that,” said Augusta. “I for- 
get other houses and other people. I always feel, 
somehow, as if I and the thunder-cloud had it all 
between us.” 

“It does n’t always do to centralize one’s self,” 
said Grandon Cope. He looked at her as he spoke, in 
an earnest sort of way I had seen in him with her be- 
fore, already. He seemed somehow to study Augusta 
Hare. 

What she said of the thunder-cloud was true of her 
relation with persons, with pursuits, with whatever of 
especial importance was about or going on. She and 
this, whatever it might be, were for the time the two 
centres, — the foci. They had it all between them. 
Life lay round her so, in a continual ellipse. Society 
conformed itself in such wise almost always where she 
was. She and one other, her objective, — perhaps a 
person, perhaps only the amusement or the topic, — 


ON THE HOUSETOP. 


151 


would gradually get their bearings, and the whole 
movement would seem to swing about them. She 
would make a lecturer or a preacher preach or lecture 
to herself, before the utterance was half through. The 
whole audience might not find this out, but the speaker 
would, and a few about her would discover themselves 
less listening than watching how she listened. I have 
said that this was her attitude, always, with events. 
I do not think she could possibly help it. It was a 
magnetism, — a temperament. I do not know that 
she might not readily have drawn a danger so, if a 
danger were the thing to be drawn. But if a rescue 
came, it would come to her. She was always lucky 
in a lottery. She held high trumps at whist, pairs 
royal at commerce, and threw the numbers that made 
the play at backgammon. There is a philosophy and 
a law in these things. 

“One gets more out of life so,” she answered. 

“Unless one can live large enough to feel from 
many centres.” 

“I donH think one can be both diffusive and in- 
tense,” said she. 

But Augusta Hare’s intenseness was only at the 
self -point. She was always one centre ; but the 
ellipse might wheel itself bodily about, and embracer 
any new second that she chose, or even that chanced. 

I thought sometimes, afterward, that it might have 
been a problem like, this that Grandon Cope was study- 
ing. 

It was not by obtrusiveness, or chatter, or assertion, 
that Augusta did it ; she had infinite tact, and exqui- 
site breeding. To-night, for instance, she said so 
little; and I myself was apparently the object of 
Grandon Cope’s solicitous interest; but he was helping 
her ; I was her charge ; she was quite taken up with 
managing me beautifully, I being the thing just then 


152 


HITHEBTO. 


to be managed; it was just the two centres and he 
revolving about us. 

After the guests had gone and we went upstairs, 
Augusta walked down the long upper hall to the south- 
east window at the end, that opened out on a little 
balcony. She pushed up the sash, — for the air had 
grown warm and heavy inside, being shut up so dur- 
ing the storm, — and stepped through. 

She gave just one exclamation of a passionate de- 
light. 

“ Oh, glorious ! ” she cried, not suddenly, but with 
a slow, strong dwelling on the words. 

There was something in the tones of Augusta’s 
voice of a strange, peculiar quality. They were, in a 
fashion, ventriloquial. She never shouted; she never 
called to people loudly; she did not raise her utter- 
ance above the gentle musicalness that should be a 
woman’s; but it penetrated, and went jiist whither 
she would. It arrested you like the low bell-tinkle 
of some ringing instrument, introduced into a full- 
crashing orchestra; there were twenty louder, but this 
was of itself, and marked the pulse of the harmony. 
That was how it seemed even in a buzzing crowd ; but 
when she chose to speak like this, across a few chance 
words and laughs, such as were sounding about the 
stair-head as the girls gathered there, it shot straight 
through them all to the point she meant that it should 
reach. 

Grandon Cope walked down the gallery too, and 
came out there to her side. 

“There she is,” Augusta said, pointing straight 
away, where, in a depth of midnight blue, between 
white rifts of clouds, at about thirty degrees above 
the southeasterly horizon, hung the moon, four days 
past her full ; and close beside her, — an asterisk of 
glory to point her to men’s eyes, — the imperial 


ON THE HOUSETOP. 


153 


planet; small, intense, with his sixteen hundred times* 
distance, but mighty in his splendor to prevail across 
it all. 

Augusta Hare and that picture in the heavens ; they 
had it between them, now. 

She stood still and gazed, while the chatting went 
on at the stairway ; while one or two came and glanced 
over our shoulders, — I had gone out also, — uttered 
some word of admiration, and were content to return, 
since the little balcony could not hold them all, and 
their jest or story was not done with yet ; until they 
got inside their rooms that opened one into another so 
that they might talk there half the night; and then 
she said : — 

‘‘If the telescope were here now, Mr. Grandon! ” 

“It would be better on the roof; the balcony is 
narrow, and the window- sash is in the way; would 
you mind coming up ? ” 

There was nothing to object to, of course; it was 
only a sort of study and observatory that he had up 
there; we were all to have gone up if the weather had 
been fine; people were still moving below, and would 
be; lights were burning; the doors from the girls* 
rooms were not even shut upon the gallery; the even- 
ing was not over, only the party was, and it was just 
near enough the coming night-stillness to be beautiful. 

Augusta did not hesitate an instant; if she had, 
from that moment there would have been an objection ; 
she said at once with the utmost simpleness : — 

“I should like it exceedingly; and to show Annie, 
too; for she goes to-morrow.’* 

“That is too soon,” said Grandon Cope kindly, 
and I took what fell to my share, and went upstairs, 
quite happy, after those two. 

It was beautiful to be a woman grown, though, like 
Augusta, and to stand on a level with a man like 


154 


HITHERTO. 


Grandon Cope; to talk freely, and to dare to have 
opinions, and to get his; I with my fifteen-year-old 
brain and heart had my questions and longings, and 
there had never been anybody in all my life to meet 
and answer them. 

“They were behind it all; just as you said! ” 

The words seemed only to escape Augusta, hardly 
to be addressed to him, as she stood there by the low 
roof-railing, while he mounted and adjusted the instru- 
ment. 

“Yes; there is no mistake, in all these wonderful 
heavens. And the clouds know their places, too, as 
well. I think we needn’t be afraid! ” 

He seemed to say this last rather to me, in a half- 
playful way, but Augusta answered it. With this 
strong, serious man, she could be serious, too; less 
strong; that was her charm, doubtless. 

“But terrible things happen. And we can’t see 
what the evil is for.” So she touched the great, 
troubled, unanswered question; and looked to him as 
if he might haply solve it. 

“It takes thousands of years’ records to prove the 
compensation for disturbance yonder, ” Grandon Cope 
replied, with his face toward the stars. “God works 
at an infinite diagram.” 

It was like a thought that had come to him so in 
his daily pursuit and research that it was quite famil- 
iar. He spoke without a change of manner, and the 
next moment he turned to me, as I stood waiting 
eagerly by his side. 

“I think you ’ll have it now. Look here.” 

I knelt down on a cushion he had brought, and 
looked, and saw. Congealed shapes and wonders; 
frost-work, or molten work, or some strange, unknown, 
luminous matter, caught and arrested in a thousand 
midway forms ; a world, seen just near and far enough 


ON THE HOUSETOP. 


155 


to show its whole rough idea and outline; its finish 
and detail beyond our vision, or yet to come ; it made 
me think of glowing, unshaped metal from a forge ; it 
was like seeing a piece of God’s work on his anvil. 

And then Mr. Cope just touched his finger to the 
tube, with hardly the pressure of a breath, and lo ! the 
disk changed; the lustrous mass swept suddenly from 
the field, leaving to sight only a jagged curve and 
gleaming points; and I saw, white, and round, and 
infinitely far, — a drop, as it were, not of flame, but 
its essence, — a something clear like a sun, and com- 
pact like a pure and perfect thought, — the planet 
poised in ether; firm in the grasp of awful force, still 
in the eternal rush and fall of its tremendous motions. 

What I knew and what I saw put themselves to- 
gether so, and showed me this. 

“ The satellites cannot be seen, of course, ” said Au- 
gusta, coming to take my place as I moved away, like 
one who has no right to linger, being presented to 
majesty. 

Her words seemed trivial, somehow. 

“No,” Grandon answered. “He is like some great 
prince from a far kingdom, laying aside his retinue 
and state in courtesy to the little queen whom he sa- 
lutes to-night.” 

I could see Augusta’s smile in the moonlight. It 
pleased her, this readiness and grace. This was what 
passed current in the world, and bought there what it 
would. 

She valued him at once too little and too much. I 
saw it then. She could not reckon his whole worth. 
She discounted, as brokers do a foreign coin. 

He shifted round the tube, and showed us other 
glories. He pointed it low to the northwest, and 
found the golden locks of Berenice, clustered stars of 
the fourth magnitude, faintly traceable by the naked 


156 


HITHERTO. 


eye; he wheeled a little southward, as the summer 
heavens cleared, and brought us face to face with 
white, resplendent Arcturus ; far southward still, and 
lo, Altair, glittering between the wings of the Eagle ; 
eastward a little to Delphinus, beautiful lozenge of 
four diamonds, and Markab, flashing from the shoulder 
of the Flying Horse. He showed us double stars, and 
bright, shining nebulae, the dust of which the worlds 
are born ; he made us note the various-colored fires of 
different suns, red, golden, and pale blue. He told 
us of the wonderful violet splendor of Sirius, fairest of 
all those far-off orbs, shining now upon the under- 
world, and coming toward us with the morning ; of the 
double stars of Orion; of Rigel that clasps his ankle, 
marking his stride through heaven, and Betelgeuse 
that sits upon his shoulder, an epaulet of pride; of the 
Pleiades and Aldebaran, magnificent in the Bull; and 
it was midnight, and Capella shone on the northeast- 
ern rim of the now cloudless blue, before we bethought 
us, and went down. 

The girls were laughing still, and the servants’ steps 
yet sounded in the lower rooms ; but in half an hour 
more the house was still, and I was falling into 
strange dreams; of Augusta Hare and Grandon Cope 
walking with winged feet among the constellations, 
and of myself, wistful and wondering, looking up at 
them from beneath. 


CHAPTER XI. 

WHAT A VOICE TELLS 
OF HOPE DEVINE. 

She was only washing dishes in a kitchen sink; 
they were heaped all around her, and the great pan 
steamed in the middle ; she had a long towel over her 
arm, and her hands moved swiftly to and fro, dropping 
cups and saucers deftly into the scalding water, and 
catching them out by the edges that she tipped toward 
her with her mop- stick; swirling the cleansing suds 
around and within them almost by the same movement, 
and then transferring them to the comforting folds of 
the soft, coarse linen, out of which they came in- 
stantly, glittering, and dropped with a single ringing 
touch, — no clatter, — each to its own polished pile 
upon the white, dry table at the side. 

Only washing dishes, — Hope Devine ; but doing 
it, as she did all things else, and as nobody else did 
anything. No bigger thing sat tilting upon a smaller; 
no crumbs and fragments, crushed and smeared to- 
gether, made the work repulsive; there was a mag- 
netism of order in what she touched, and a visible 
tending toward completion ; you could see through it, 
standing by ; she saw through it, by an instinct, from 
the beginning. So no work ever looked hard or 
hopeless to her, or where she set her hand. She was 
quick to see, not only into things, but on to what they 
were to be; if you were to put her faculty into a sin- 
gle word that should betray its secret, you would call 
it onsight. 

She was therefore never discouraged, — washing 


158 


HITHERTO. 


dishes, or living her life ; she never stopped short in 
the middle, balked by difficulty or default. She made 
things do ; there was always enough ; it “ came out ” 
or it “ went in ” somehow, as she said, and meant it 
should; by the pure force of will, Mrs. Hathaway 
thought sometimes. “I suppose you see it; I don’t,” 
she would say. Mrs. Hathaway thought “she had 
never come across such a girl to learn in her life. She 
didn’t learn; she just jumped at it.” 

“There ’s that sitting-room carpet,” she told every- 
body. “Why, there seemed to me to be yards of it 
good for nothing, and not a scrap left like it except 
the piece laid down before the fireplace, and a bit at 
the door. Hope stood in the middle, and looked at 
it, after we ’d spread it down. ‘I see how it goes,’ 
said she. ‘I don’t believe you do, for it don’t go,* 
says I, half cross. ‘Yes,’ says she, right off, as spry 
and pert as a peeping chicken. ‘Look here! You 
don’t want any under that great sideboard. That ’s 
a good breadth up against the wall. Take it out and 
put it in the middle. Then the worn-out piece in the 
middle (it was worn out, to be sure, for it was a great 
hole, and no piece at all) can be cut across, and the 
rest put each way from the sideboard. Then those 
two ends by the doors can be taken off, and the rug 
pieces matched on; and there ’s enough good along the 
selvages in the old ends to make out that narrow strip 
against the hearth that ’s ragged. You ’ll see! ’ So 
I just let her go to work, and I helped her rip, and 
cut, and match, and catch-stitch, and darn; and it 
fairly flew together ; seemed • as if every piece knew 
where ’twas wanted; and she sat laughing, and tell- 
ing some fairy tale about birds’ feathers of every color 
and kind that sorted themselves in heaps and were 
ready in no time, and by night we ’d a bran’ -new 
carpet out of those rags. She sees through a day’s 


WHAT A VOICE TELLS. 


159 


work, or a week’s, just so; and ’t isn’t so much her 
moving quick that does it, as a kind of faith, the mus- 
tard-seed kind, I truly believe. It ’s like turning a 
stocking; she puts her hand in at a Monday morning 
and catches a Saturday night hy the heel, and pulls it 
through, and there it is ! ” 

She was only washing dishes ; hut there was the sort 
of pleasure in seeing her do it that there is in watch- 
ing a pianist’s fingers, touching always, and so swiftly, 
the right keys ; or an artist, laying his pencil here or 
there, leaving firm lines and just shadows; or any 
other sure and dexterous thing that is done, in art or 
industry, or for a beauty. I think the sound or sight 
that is born of the work is only the record that it 
leaves; it is the achieving that we think of secretly; 
the touch of faith and onsight. 

Richard Hathaway came and stood in the doorway, 
looking at her. 

“I like to see you work, Hope,” said he. 

Hope worked on, with a smile lightening and linger- 
ing upon her face ; and a little color that came with it 
warming her cheek; as if a sun-ray had streamed in 
and smitten her. 

“I’m going up to Longmead this afternoon,” he 
said again, “to drive back the new horse. It ’s a 
grand, pleasant day. Wouldn’t you like to go? ” 

Richard Hathaway never felt a pleasantness that he 
did not seek to share with somebody. 

“ Certain, ” said Hope, in a quaint, happy little in- 
correct way she had of speaking. Out of her books, 
and from daily intercourse with plain, unprecise peo- 
ple, she had gathered an odd mixture of cultured and 
uncultured speech, that perhaps expressed what she 
was better than any more consistent style could have 
done. 

“Certain I should. And it ’s good of you, Rich- 
ard.” 


160 


HITHERTO. 


These were her thanks. Uttered very much as if it 
were good of him of course, and for unnumbered times, 
and hardly need be said; as we say other thanks, 
perhaps. But the sunshine deepened rosier up her 
cheeks, and glanced in her eyes like light through a 
clear amber wine; flushed and glanced still, after 
Richard had gone away again. 

Hope was seventeen, now. Five years she had lived 
with the Hathaways. Martha went and came, in this 
time; up the country to an invalid sister, helping her 
“fix up the children, and see to David Henry’s 
clothes ; ” or “ lifting them along through haying- 
time, ” or a “spring-cleaning;” home again for a 
“winter spell,” or to do the June butter-making. 
Mrs. Hathaway could always spare her best just when 
she wanted to go, and was “proper glad ” to see her 
back, because of something that was just afoot at that 
time. And in this household where all things chanced 
“as well as not,” and usually better, Hope’s sunny 
nature fitted itself in with other bright things, and 
shone on ; and she pulled her Saturday nights through 
from her Monday mornings, and the two ends met, 
and the life was rounded, and its work complete, piece 
by piece, as it went on. 

She lived by weeks and days; for doing and for 
having what she could see ; she did not trouble herself 
about the years ; she never tried to pull them through. 

“What if Mrs. Hathaway should die?” Other 
people said this, speaking of Hope and of her home at 
the farm; but it never crossed her thought. “Or if 
Richard ” — People speculated about him, too, still, 
though he was seven and twenty, and pretty Lucy 
Kilham was married and gone out to Ohio, long ago ; 
but Hope never did ; she just let the sunshine touch 
her as it came, and flushed and ripened under it like a 
peach in a south shelter. If she ever thought of what 


WHAT A VOICE TELLS. 161 

she had not, it was as of a great reserve out of which 
all good might come ; not as of a wealth withheld. 

“Hope lives in the middle of her pasture,” said 
Richard Hathaway of her once. “She doesn’t go 
fretting her neck over the fence.” 

Old Putterkoo went comfortably jogging along over 
the Hill Road ; taking her own pace and time. Com- 
ing home, there would be a young horse in the thills, 
and she would have to keep up behind; this, with an 
easy pull now, would be a half day’s work for her. 

Hope sat in her linen cape and sunbonnet, with a 
shawl on her lap for the return drive, happy and sim- 
ple like a child. To be out in the fresh June air, full 
of growth and sunshine, — to loiter along between 
acres square of mellow ploughed grounds rich with deep 
brown furrows full of seed, green mowings where every 
lithe stem stood instinct with full, springing, juicy 
life, and the sweet grass-smell was more delicate than 
flowers, and vivid grain-fields glowing with young 
green ; over slow rise of long hills down whose farther 
sides they came into new beauty of open farms or green 
depths of wood-patches; across singing brooks, — 
through them, now and then, for Putterkoo to wet her 
dusty hoofs, and the clear water to plash up over hub 
and axle, and drip with flash and tinkle from spoke 
and tire ; past still, lovely glade-openings into shadows 
among old pines, where a foot-path or a cart-track 
wound away into the wood-lots, and the ground was 
blue with tender summer violets, all along the barest 
roadside, where nothing was bare, but the wide way- 
borders, crisp with short pasture-grass, were starred 
everywhere with delicate houstonias, white like snow 
or purple with intenser life; every step was a joy, 
every breath a leaping growth of soul and body in 
God’s bountiful world of light and fragrance. 

“Are you afraid of Pitch Hill, Hope? I brought 


162 


HITHERTO. 


you round this way for the prospect. Such a day as 
this, you’ll see over three counties. There,” — and 
he pointed with his whip-lash, — “over that crown 
you ’ll get it.” 

Straight before them lifted the long ridge up whose 
sides they had been winding, with green turf-rim, and 
gray boulders marking the sky-line close above, that 
should widen out presently with a burst and take in a 
sweep of a hundred miles. 

Hope was looking down, and along her side the way. 
The blue wild geranium grew in heaping clusters hard 
by where the wheels ran. Along a mossy old fence 
sprang a striped squirrel, sitting quizzically upon each 
post as he came to it, for a flash of time, and then 
darting on. A bobolink, with his pied clown costume 
and his gay chatter, cracking some bird- joke, swung 
up and down on a last year’s goldenrod, near where 
his mate, doubtless, brooded her eggs. All these 
things came in the near range of Hope’s vision, and 
the summer tenderness and bounty held them all. 

“Every inch of it is beautiful,” she said, answering 
Richard Hathaway’s talk of three counties. “See 
there, and there, and there ! ” 

Richard dropped the reins upon her hands without 
stopping the horse, and sprang out over the wheel. He 
gathered handfuls of blue geraniums, with two or three 
quick clutches, sjDrang in again, and laid them in her 
lap. 

Hope looked up and thanked him, with the child- 
happiness brimming in her face. 

“You make the most of it all, as you go, Hope. 
You ain’t in any hurry for the top.” 

Hope laughed. “That would be botching,” said 
she. 

“Botching? ” 

“Yes; as the little children do their patchwork. 


WHAT A VOICE TELLS. 


163 


Hurrying to the end of the seam and not minding the 
little stitches. Then the whole seam is good for 
nothing, you see.” 

Richard Hathaway sat still, and began to whistle. 
It put things in his head. Hope’s words were apt 
to. The things in his head were not words, only 
glimpses. They did not come often to what he could 
utter back. But they were there ; glimpses of years, 
now, that people botched, looking for ends and new 
openings, and missing the wayside sufficiency and joy. 
Something vaguely reminded him of Anstiss Dolbeare, 
looking for things beyond, reaching on, with a pain, 
and a far sight, not able to be quite content. If he 
had gathered blue geraniums for her, would her face 
have been full, like Hope’s? 

“How I like the little birch- trees ! ” Hope exclaimed. 
“Every small leaf seems so glad. The others are in 
great heaps, grand against the sky. But the sunshine 
and the wind get in all around every one of these, 
and they all dance and shine, on their own bits of 
stems.” 

She talked on, never thinking that she did think, 
or that she spoke. The current of beauty ran through 
her as it ran through all. Richard said nothing, and 
she missed nothing that he should have said. Was he 
not there, also, with it all? 

Hope De^v^ine was happy. Her blessed temperament 
was in direct line and relation with all sweet, electric 
influences. Richard Hathaway yearned for the other 
nature, high and gentle and tender also, but sad with 
a hard repression, restless with unanswered desire. 
He had known it and pitied it, so, all through his life, 
and had been trying, in his way, to make up to it what 
it lacked. And he knew there was something that he 
could not give it ; something it would never be quite 
at peace without. He knew it all, and she herself 


164 


HITHEBTO. 


knew not how well he knew. His large heart was full 
of a mute understanding, and a longing for himself 
and her. And to her he seemed hut simple, kind, 
uncomprehending . 

This was the Silent Side. 

Going on, always, along with her own life, feeling 
its impulses, asking the same questions, humbly, 
mutely ; not able to turn round upon her from a height, 
and hold down strong hands to lift her up. 

When do we lift each other up ? Must we gain a 
height first, or can we reach up our feebleness together 
to the Hands that do offer us a mighty help from on 
high? 

Counterparts? Aflinities? We may go looking for 
them, and we may chance, some of us, to think we 
find them ; but the tender patience of human souls in 
a common need is the true affinity; and God has given 
humanity its one Complement in his Son. 

Anstiss Dolbeare did not know; Richard Hathaway 
could not tell; so the prose of her life went on, and 
here, in a silence covered over with a plain, unfigured 
living, lay the syllables that might have filled the 
measure and made it musical with rhyme. In the 
kingdom of heaven these harmonies utter themselves 
all the while that we are ignorantly jangling and miss- 
ing them here. Some time, when we wake to them, 
they shall sweep over the soul in tears. 

“I wish we had Anstiss Dolbeare at the farm this 
June weather,” he said to Hope, who knew nothing of 
the hidden links that joined the thought of her with 
what they had been saying of the birch leaves, and the 
blue geraniums, and the wayside pleasantness, but sup- 
posed that quite a new subject had suggested itself to 
Richard. Underground currents and apparent gaps! 
If they could be traced and bridged with their secret 
continuities I Histories write themselves out all around 


WHAT A VOICE TELLS. 165 

us, with only a few words in heart cipher liere and 
there, that we cannot read to make them plain. 

“She ought to be here to go strawberrying on Red 
Hill,” Hope answered. 

Hope was true as she was strong. She had a little 
imperceptible pause with herself before she made this 
answer ; and, making it, she spoke precisely her feel- 
ings, and no more. It was not, “ I wish so too, ” or 
“Oh, if she could! ” but “She ought to be.” 

And yet Hope did not wish, actually, otherwise; 
Anstiss Dolbeare had been many a time at the farm 
since the day that Hope had stood on the wharf at 
New Oxford, and Richard Hathaway had come for her 
to take her away into her new life, and felt as if he 
had picked up a sunbeam ; and the girls were friends. 
Real friends ; for Anstiss was of too earnest and seek- 
ing a nature, and Hope too frank and genuine, for 
them to be anything at all to each other, unless this ; 
but somehow Hope felt herself at hard work when An- 
stiss came and stayed. There was a something here 
to be made out, pieced together, “made to go,” that 
was worse than the old carpet. In her own life, Hope 
could deal with the elements, and see her way through, 
in her happy fashion, bit by bit, which was all that 
she wanted; inert material, circumstance, fell to her 
bright will ; but here was the antagonism of utterly 
different temperament, unabsorbent, often, of the sweet 
cheer of hers; unperceptive, sometimes, of the whole 
good that there might be for itself. 

Hope did not know just what it was ; she felt, with 
her nice instinct, that there was a something to be ad- 
justed ; and as if her little office in the grand economy 
were just the instant righting of all the atoms about 
her, she could not be at peace with their disturbed po- 
larity. There was some uncomprehended sense, too, 
of dim loss and trouble to herself ; in herself, rather ; 


166 


HITHERTO. 


she was too unselfish to be able to look at it objec- 
tively; but the full, free joy of her life got a little 
stray ache into it somehow, she could not tell how; 
she could scarcely tell where she felt it. Some people 
lose and suffer, even unto the end, without knowing 
anything, but that, as Mrs. Gradgrind would have 
said, “ there was a pain somewhere ” in the world, 
and it might be possible that it was theirs. 

At nineteen, all the strong, unsatisfied longings of 
the child had grown, with Anstiss Dolbeare, into the 
passionate striving and demand of the woman’s nature. 
And the old life was round her still. Its contradic- 
tions, its half opportunities, its withholdings, its 
snatchings away. An unseen beauty and wealth lay, 
as well, about her very feet, if she would only stoop 
or kneel to find it. But lifting her face ujd always 
in a far-asking and imjDortunate prayer, she set, as it 
were, her tread upon it, and passed on in her pain, 
telling herself, always, her half the story ; saying over 
the old, rough lines of life, unrecognizing their hint 
of a grand, beautiful measure, and calling them hard 
prose. 

Hope had a vague suggestion in herself of the un- 
found rhymes. Only she could not rhyme for another. 
And the strange jangle meddled with her own song. 

So she said only, “She ought to be here.” The 
June blessedness and Anstiss Dolbeare, — these 
“ought” to come together. Ah, the old, homely 
proverb about the horse and the water! You may 
plunge a soul into heaven itself, and the pores of its 
being may be closed against the divine ether. 

Anstiss Dolbeare was stirred and kindled, as al- 
ways, by all beautiful things; stirred, but not satis- 
fied ; only reminded, continually, of that which might 
be and was not. Spiritual far-sight was her disease. 
Just a touch of myopy is a safer and a happier thing. 


WHAT A VOICH TELLS. 


167 


That cures as one grows old; the other aggravates as 
the lenses flatten, till the lines of light fall wide, and 
there is blankness. 

“We T1 ask her out; we ’ll go for her in the new 
wagon with Swallow, — you and I.” Richard almost 
always drew Hope into such plans, in these days ; he 
was shy of asking Anstiss, as he used to, to go off with 
him alone. 

He stopped the horse on the top of Pitch Hill, as 
he spoke; a swift afternoon breeze met them, and 
passed them by over the brow ; all the rich breath of 
the flelds and forests and gardens was in it, borne up 
here out of a wide champaign over which summer was 
bursting, and sunlight had brooded warm for hom’S. 

It smote upon every sense, that magnificent out- 
spread; such a great piece of the beautiful earth at 
once ; and such a depth and width and glory of heaven 
reaching up above, and gently down round about it ! 

Forest and river glimpses; still, blue ponds lying 
in beautiful curves ; spires white and slender, pointing 
only a little way, after all, like a child’s finger, into 
the fathomless; houses gathered together, here and 
there, a tiny sprinkle of human life in the midst of the 
wide, rioting, redundant lesser life that feeds it ; 
roadways winding everywhere along the hillsides and 
across intervales, losing themselves in green shadows 
and down valley-hollows; no entire track traceable 
straight through to anywhere, but bends and stretches 
and bits gleaming out indicatively ; with now and then 
a wagon laboring along, or a swifter vehicle rolling 
across the open, visible a little way and then covered 
in again. Cattle in soft- sloping pastures ; birds trav- 
ersing the blue air; a crow slow-flapping, low, over a 
cornfield; sounds of mingled songs and hums and 
rustlings and ripplings coming up from all in a pleas- 
ant, far-off, nameless stir. 


bithehto. 


168 

Hope, who could take in so blessedly the little and 
close, could seize, with such a hurst as this, the width 
and grandeur of its suggestion. 

“Oh, Richard! ” she cried out simply. “Just think 
of the whole of it ! Going all round and round the 
world! ” 

She took the globe in her hands for an instant, 
mentally ; faintly feeling the grand idea of it, and re- 
ceiving a far-away rajiturous reflection of the Great- 
ness that “taketh up the isles as a very little thing.” 

“Some of it is water,” said Richard, in his homely, 
practical way, half quietly comical in intention. 

“Yes,” said Hope, just as literal, and despising 
nothing, hut getting the further inspiration out of all. 
“And ships, and islands, and icebergs, and storms! 
And then countries again, and people ! ” 

Why could not Richard, catching her large yet sim- 
ple thought, that enlarged his own, so that even his 
clumsiness helped, not hindered it, have seen too 
how this girl’s nature fitted his, and how sufficiently 
each to the other they rounded and satisfied and 
poised, themselves in a perfect rest and peace together ? 

“You ’d like so to see the world, Hope! ” 

“Why, yes,” she said slowly, coming back, as it 
were, to the recollection that it was not all open, ac- 
tual, instant vision. “But then,” returning to her 
first insight and joy, “I do see it; my piece of it, 
you know; and that ’s all that anybody sees, at once. 
For the rest of it, you have to shut your eyes.” 

Still, as in the childish days, she could “shut her 
eyes and be there.” I do not know that I can tell 
you of such a character as Hope Devine’s without seem- 
ing to make it contradict itself. Such small content, 
and such large grasp; but they were there; and I 
think they are the clear reflection in a healthy human 
soul of that Spirit which weighs the dust of the earth 


WHAT A VOICE TELLS. 169 

in a balance, and spreads out the clouds as curtains ; 
that peoples the water-drop with infinite life, and 
walks with its archangels among the stars. 

They came winding slowly down, the whole way, 
into Longmead; and Richard cut an ash-branch and 
fastened it at the wagon-side to shield Hope from the 
western sun, and asked her little questions about her 
comfort, and cared for her all along as he cared for 
everything that was in his hands; and Hope was so 
happy with his kindness, and with the beautiful day, 
and the life and the light and the music and the odors 
of it, and the thoughts that were things, that it never 
occurred to her to be troubled lest all this were not 
with Richard, too, in like manner, or beyond, what it 
was with her. Of course it was. Had he not 
brought her here on purpose ? 

They went round through the valleys, coming back; 
Pitch Hill was too much of an experiment with Swal- 
low, and old Putterkoo was glad of the soft brown soil 
of the low land under her hoofs, after the cling and 
scramble among the rough stone and the hot gravel of 
the water-washed and sun-blazed road of the heights. 

They skimmed along, with the swift fresh horse, 
and Putterkoo got her old mettle up, following with 
no weight to carry ; her white nose was cosily over the 
wagon-back behind their shoulders. Under the cool 
willows beside the running water; in the air damp and 
sweet with the meadow moistures, with the light of 
the low sun touching and tingeing all things sidewise, 
and the lowing of cattle at their yard-bars, and the 
faint chitter of birds settling to their nests, foretell- 
ing and forefeeling stillness and rest after the long 
summer day of life and labor. 

Hope thought of this ride years after, when things 
had happened that she dated from that night. 

Into the wide, shady village street of Broadfields, 


170 


HITHERTO. 


and by the church green; down past the thinning 
dwellings, out between open grounds again; over the 
brook and through the edge of woods that lay across 
the road, and up again to the cheery house-yard and 
the door wide open to the sunset. 

Anstiss Dolbeare, in a white cambric gown and a 
black silk mantle, sat beside Mrs. Hathaway on the 
oaken sill. From her fair hair gathered back in soft 
curves from her forehead, and around the head set with 
a peculiar grace upon the shoulders, down to the little 
foot that lay in a close-laced black morocco shoe upon 
the great granite doorstone, she was “a lady, every 
inch,” as the people say. Sweet, still, refined; the 
eager nature burning only in the deep gray eyes that 
with their straight, dark line of brow and the defining 
of close lashes, also dark, made a singular combination 
with the soft shade of the brown hair. 

She sat there with his mother, waiting, while Rich- 
ard drove up. Hope felt him give a little start, see- 
ing her at the first as they turned in from the road; 
and the throb that sprang out of his heart shot a wind- 
ing vein into relief upon his temple, and there was a 
sudden glow out of his eyes. This is the way a strong 
man blushes; and it means, with all the added force 
of the man’s nature, what a woman means when she 
flushes like a rose. 

“I have come here for a rest,” said Anstiss Dol- 
beare, standing up and reaching out her hand to him. 

Richard Hathaway held his young horse with one 
hand by the bridle, and grasped hers with the other. 

“We ’re right down glad to see you, Anstiss,” was 
the young farmer’s hearty, common speech. 

What could he say but this after his fashion ? He 
was too much a man to stand and blush there ; he gave 
her the quick, generous welcome that he always had 
for her; he blundered, perhaps, into one of his most 


WHAT A VOICE TELLS. 


171 


rustic expressions, just because he would so carefully 
have chosen the most beautiful words if he could, and 
while his brain sought them in a sudden tumult, his 
lips spoke something that came without a thought. 

For the remainder, it kept silence ; but he heard his 
own heart beating in his ears. 

There was no tingle in Anstiss Dolbeare’s nerves, 
and the blood in her veins ran calm. So how should 
she catch the sound of the tempest that came only to 
him? She heard the evening wind in the long elm- 
boughs, and she thought how still it was, and how she 
should find here the rest she had come for. 

Hope sprang down, while Richard stood there with 
both hands busy. 

“Why did you do that? ” he asked. “I was com- 
ing to help you.” 

“Oh, I can help myself,” she answered brightly; 
and then she kissed Anstiss, and the two girls went in 
together. 


CHAPTER XII. 

BLANK VERSE; AND CLOVER. 

THE SILENT SIDE. 

The third perception and the voice must still read 
on, and tell a little of that which came next in the 
story of these lives that learned their own story in sep- 
arate halves. 

And whence, by the way, arrives that intuition that 
we are all conscious of while our fragmentary experi- 
ence runs on, and we feel how little we are compre- 
hended and how little we comprehend, and how small 
the time, and how poor the power to explain or to 
make clear, — of a something outside of us that puts 
together the pieces ; before which we justify ourselves, 
and finish word and deed that were broken off and pre- 
vented, take back the thing unmeant, and turn our 
whole selves toward a new light that shows us other 
than the world sees? In the sense of which we find 
dim consolation, reassurance, hope? 

Side by side with this unknown apprehension, iden- 
tifying himself, however humbly, with it, must the 
dealer with thought and life that might he or that may 
have been, put himself, and look, and listen. For 
that apprehension is, if in One only; it is the relation 
God himself holds to every human soul. It is no light 
thing, then, hut a solemn, to make one’s self an in- 
sight and a voice, to see and to tell such things. As 
Hope Devine said in her fanciful childhood, who knows 
if “we can see anything that isn’t there? ” 

Hope and Anstiss slept together. Anstiss liked 
this when she stayed at the farm ; it gave less trouble, 


BLANK VEBBE; AND CLOVER, 


173 


and Hope was a part of the rest for which she came. 
She leaned upon her strength, instinctively; she got 
the help, the comfort; Hope, giving it, and because 
she gave it heartily, felt the strain, as we have seen. 

So they sat and talked, as girls do, on their bed- 
side ; pulling the combs and pins out of their hair, and 
loosening their garments ; putting off the real undress- 
ing, the brushing and the pinning up ; when they began 
to do this they would begin to pin themselves up again 
into their individuality, also; it is this unbending 
from the outer restraints that has much to do with the 
setting free of confidence. 

“I can’t tell what it is that Aunt Ildy wants,” said 
Anstiss, hanging hairpins . carefully one by one over the 
teeth of the shell comb she held horizontally, as if 
that were precisely the important thing in the world 
to be done, and the doing it was what puzzled her. 
“I think she is fond of me in her way, and would 
rather I should come to good than otherwise; and yet 
she has thought it her duty for so many years to pre- 
vent me from having my want and my way in any- 
thing, that she can’t keep her hands off now. She ’s 
proud to have me noticed; she sets it all down to the 
Chisms; she gets her best china out, and asks Allard 
Cope to stay to tea, and then she snubs him by way of 
taking me down, when he talks to me ; for fear I shall 
feel of consequence, and it shouldn’t be good for me; 
and she tells me the next day that it all means no- 
thing; I needn’t imagine it does; he hasn’t many 
other places about here to go to, and he ’s got a way of 
dropping in to talk to Uncle Royle. And then again, 
if he stays away, she hints something about off and on, 
and that nothing of that sort will answer with the 
Chisms, and she should think it was my business to 
understand what he was about, and my own mind, and 
to give him to know one thing or the other; but then 


174 


HITHERTO. 


she never did suppose there was 'anything in it; and it 
always sounds like ‘How should there he? ’ and a kind 
of taunt flung at me. I feel sometimes as if I could 
do anything to get out of such a life, and to show 
Aunt Ildy — Oh, I ’m disgusted with it all ! I 
can’t have a friend, nor a pleasantness; and she tires 
me, — she tires me so, Hope ! ” 

There was a life-long weariness in Anstiss’ voice; 
and it dropped away, and she ended, as if so she gave 
all up, and would let it fall away from her if she 
could, only that it still clung and dragged. 

This was what tired Hope, too. 

But when she could not just see the beginning of a 
righting, she insisted upon the end that was to be. 

“It will all come out, somehow. It has got to, 
you know. Things always do. They can’t stay up 
in arms.” 

That was how she felt with an old carpet that lay 
in a heap, or a dress ripped uj) into pieces. 

“If you care, yourself ” — And here she stopped. 
Hope would by no means ask for the most intimate 
confidence of all. 

“I don’t know. Sometimes I think I don’t care 
for anything. How can I tell how things might be? 
They have no business to be 2Dut into my head, before- 
hand. I’m ashamed; ashamed of being a woman, 
Hope Devine, and of having it thought that I am stand- 
ing ready to be asked I ” 

She spoke imjDetuously, bitterly; wronged in her 
most sacred reserve, and driven to sj)eak of what she 
would not have allowed herself to know, until another 
who should have the right should have come to her 
and bid her search, to give him answer. 

“She spoils it all, whatever it might be. She would 
make it a cheat, even if it might have been the truth. 
I never wanted anybody to come and say, ‘You are go- 


BLANK VERSE; AND CLOVER. 


175 


ing to have something given you, ’ even if they knew. 
I felt as if I had stolen and used and defaced it 
secretly, before the time; as if my thanks would be 
hypocrisy, because I had helped myself to it already. 
I have come here to get away, and to have a rest.” 

“Well, we ’ll rest you. That is the best thing. 
It ’s good to put a bother away over night. It all 
straightens out in the morning.” 

“I wish I belonged here. Or at the Copes’. Any- 
where that I could just be. Then I suppose I should 
live my life, whatever it was. But Aunt Ildy pokes 
at my roots so.” 

“People can’t do, after all, anything except what 
they ’re set to. Make it out, I mean, unless it is 
meant. It ’s the transplanting that is to come next, 
maybe, for you, and then, you see, you ’ll flourish! ” 

Hope did not begin to say this until she had waited, 
in a half-troubled silence, for a minute or two. Then 
it came, and she brightened up, and gave it right out 
in her peculiar quick fashion; quite sure of it, as if 
she had thought it over and over, long ago, and proved 
it by a full experience. She ended with a little jubi- 
lance; and her face turned up at Anstiss, suddenly, 
with a light in it like an ecstasy of promise. 

“Your face is like a sky-full of stars when you look 
so, Hope,” said Anstiss. 

Hope laughed. “That ’s poetry,” said she. 

“You made it, if it is,” said Anstiss. 

“Well, perhaps,” Hope rejoined merrily. “It don’t 
take much to make poetry, after all. Why, every- 
thing is poetry 1 ” 

“Blank verse, a good deal of it,” the other answered, 
falling back into her weary way. 

Blank \evse? ” 

“Yes; the verse without a rhyme; long, heavy lines, 
just doled out in a measure, and every one beginning 


176 


HITHERTO. 


with a capital letter, just to make you catch your 
breath and think you ’re going to begin again.” 

“Why, that ’s like ‘Paradise Lost.’ That ’s what 
the hero-stories are told in.” 

“I ’m afraid I ’m not heroic,” said Anstiss. “And 
I ’d as lief my life wouldn’t try to be an epic.” 

“Anstiss, dear, I ’d read it, and make it grand, 
whatever it is! I wouldn’t skip, either. It all be- 
longs; and the coming out ’ll be splendid/ It always 
is, you know.” 

“I don’t know. Half the time they ’re all killed 
off at the end, aren’t they? ”• 

“Well? ” said Hope, in her very cheeriest tone. 

“Well? ” repeated Anstiss half angrily. 

“Then you do begin again, don’t you? And then,” 
— a sort of glorious earnestness came into her shining 
eyes, — “there ’s the hero-story — finished! ” 

That word of hers silenced them in a strange, un- 
looked-for way. They had touched on unexpected 
depths in their talk, begun in mere girl-fashion. Per- 
haps there came a thought of the world’s great Hero- 
story; of Him who bore its utmost strain and agony, 
and said that of it, — It is finished ! 

They left off talking; they put away their things 
and rolled up their hair. Anstiss went and looked out 
at the window, in a stillness, for some minutes ; Hope 
went straight and simply to the bedside, in her white 
nightdress, and knelt down. After that, they kissed 
each other, and got into bed, and the room was still. 

Richard set the blinds open and drew the curtains 
wide in his east windows, before he went to sleep that 
night. He meant to be up in the early morning and 
off to Red Hill, to see*if strawberries were ripe. So 
he got his three-mile walk, and his certainty ; finding 
the wild fruit lying in patient perfectness under its 


BLANK VKBSE; AND CLOVEB. 177 

green leaves, on the far-off slope, doing its best with 
flashing crimson and rich perfume to advertise fairly 
that it was there; and he brought back his news, and 
his sturdy appetite and sound cheeriness of temper, to 
his mother’s plentiful breakfast, and the whole room 
and everything in it was pleasanter from the minute 
he came in. 

Here was not a man to hang about in a listless love, 
capable of but one weak thing; he would be out on his 
farm presently, among his men and his oxen, and the 
smell of brown earth would be in his nostrils, and the 
sunlight penetrating him through and through, filling 
him with hearty vitality and grand manly power ; and 
whatever was in him would be expanding itself to the 
great round of a far, breezy horizon, and growing pure 
and clear under the searching light and sifting winds 
of the full, wide out-of-doors that he lived and wrought 
in. Something healthy, and strong, and worth having 
comes to a woman out of a heart like this, fed out of 
a nature and a life like that. A great brain and great 
book-feeding may be fine things ; they are ; but alone, 
away from other feeding, they are the poorer of the 
two. There is great meaning in that word — “heart- 
iness.” The soul does not lie in a point; it fills the 
whole human creature. A child, or a complete, health- 
ful man or woman, will lay the hand on the breathing 
bosom to express its being and its feeling; it is large 
and palpitant there, and thence it thrills to the very 
finger-ends ; one with only a brain and a marrow will 
be aware but of a buzzing and a spinning in the skull. 
A bee in the bonnet, oftentimes, as likely as not. 

It was a whole-hearted man who, as we know now, 
loved Anstiss Dolbeare. 

Fbr her, she got up this morning into a new, free, 
joyous existence. She had slept off the weariness of 
her latest vexations, and no real passion, or suffering. 


178 


HITHERTO. 


or life-questioning had as yet laid such vital hold of 
her that it could filter itself through her rest and her 
dreams, and tincture her new day. 

She “began again” at Broadfields, always; here it 
seemed, somehow, as if the sun' itself had never risen , 
before, but had just been made. 

She came downstairs, singing; she was full of a 
readiness to receive blessedly ; the old life was all be- 
hind the night, thrust and huddled away there, like a 
last year’s garment which one may never want again. 
She was glad when Richard told them of the straw- 
berry plenty; they would go in the cool of the after- 
noon ; she felt as if she could pick a bushel. 

Hope almost wondered at her. She herself never 
had such ups and downs; she rested in a clear mid- 
atmosphere, poised on constant wings of a strong, 
blithe confidence. But she was glad for Anstiss that 
she could sing so. 

Everything was satisfying ; everything was amusing ; 
she was yeady to work and to plan pleasure; to sing 
and to laugh. 

All that happened touched some spring. 

She came running to HojDe in the hack kitchen 
where she was hanging up her tin pans. 

“There ’s such a woman in the sitting-room! — who 
is she, Hope? — saying something to Mrs. Hathaway 
about a pasture and a fence. Her nose is six inches 
long, and her mouth is under her chin, and she talks 
with her elbows! Puts the stops, I mean, and the 
italics, and the dashes, — so! ‘Layin’ consider’ble 
hutter down this June, Mrs. Hathaway ? ’ ” and Anstiss 
jerked one elbow up toward Hope’s face, — “that ’s 
the butter, and the interrogation point. ‘You’re a 
master-hand at dairy-work — alius teas ” — poking 
sideways at her with the other, and turning the end of 
the poke up in the air, — “that ’s emphasis, and ex- 


BLANK VEBSE; AND. CLOVER. 


179 


clamation. And so she goes on. ‘ Hired gals 
little account, hey ? ’ — with a dash backward — I 
can’t do it — for the ‘precious,’ and a flourish round 
into her side again for the ‘hey ’ ! Why, who ever 
saw such a woman ? Where does she come from ? ” 

“From Red Hill way,” said Hope. “If we stop 
at her house to-night she ’ll give us spruce beer that 
she makes herself, with all sorts of woods-flavors in it. 
She lives all alone there, except when she goes away 
sometimes to nurse sick people.” 

“We’ll stop, then. I should like the beer, hut it 
can’t be equal to the elbows. I mmt go back. Can’t 
lose it, you see ! ” And Anstiss put her head down 
till she seemed to talk from under her chin, and leaned 
toward Hope, nodding and thrusting up her elbow at 
her again with a nudge and a sweep that expressed 
italics and admirations, and a dozen unspoken words 
in parenthesis. “It ’s the greatest fun I ever saw.” 

Hope thought how things must have chafed upon a 
nature that could be merry like this, before they could 
make it bitter, and hopeless, and sad, like last night; 
and she caught, too, a glimpse of the truth, that as 
yet it was purely outside chafing, the inmost vitality 
was safe, and might yet leap out and rejoice. So she 
spread her clean kitchen towels on the line in the sun, 
and began to sing, too. 

“If she can just be let alone,” she thought, “and 
have things come to her.” 

They drove over to the foot of Red Hill in the open 
wagon, that afternoon; let down some pasture bars, 
and followed a cart-track over the short, dry, mossy 
turf, till, down a little bend between the roots of the 
great land-swell, they came into a shade of oaks and 
upon one of those little old farmhouses, black with un- 
painted age, having a one-story upright in front and a 
long stretch of roof behind that a child could run up 


180 


HITHEBTO. 


and down on, descending gently from the ridge-pole 
till it almost kissed the ground. Under a roof like 
that, one thought of a family of children as of chick- 
ens brooded under a wing. 

Up to the very doorsill grew the short, green grass ; 
lilac-bushes peeped round the corners and looked in at 
the windows. There was a hop- vine growing up one 
frame-post, swinging its tender budding sprays of deli- 
cate green, and spreading its dark, rich leafage all 
along eaves and rafters and down against the old shin- 
gled sides like a tapestry. 

“This is Mrs. Cryke’s, ” said Hope, and Richard 
pulled up the horse at the doorway. 

“I knew what you’d come for,” sounded, almost 
before they saw; “wait half Vi minute; ” and with this 
they perceived the elbow first, coming out at them like 
a great caret, while Mrs. Cryke poured foaming beer 
out of a full pitcher, as if she knew what had been left 
out of their pleasure so far, and was interlining it. 

“I knew you couldn’t get such beer nowhere else. 
There, drink that ; and ain’t it smachirC good? ” 

Between pitcher and mug, and question marks, and 
marks of emphasis, both elbows were by this time 
working wondrously, and good Mrs. Cryke was like 
the wooden man with the flails on the weather-vane 
over Richard Hathaway’s barn. 

“It ’s like pine woods and fern pastures and swamp 
pinks and everything ! ” cried Anstiss, giving hack the 
mug. 

“It ’s got everything in it; everything that ’s good, 
and that grows, — almost ! ” and the mug was full 
again, though how, goodness knows, for there was a 
nudge and a chuckle, and all the accents, and the 
whole play and tone of gratified expression between 
those elbows and the things the hands held, while she 
did it. A compliment fairly set the old lady flying. 


BLANK VEBSE; AND CLOVEB. 181 

“Well, here are some early marrowfats that have 
got the best of my field in ’em,” said Richard Hatha- 
way, pulling a hag from under the seat, when they had 
all drunk of the mountain essence. “And if there ’s 
anything they haven’t got that they ought to have, 
you ’ll boil it into ’em, somehow.” And he tossed it 
out upon the grass. 

“Well, I’m beholden to ye, I’m sure! You 
never come empty - handed ; it ’s give and take, to 
treat you ; and the take ’s the biggest, by all odds ! ! ” 

The way she edged nearer and got among the wheels, 
and reached up and illustrated, and pointed, and put 
double exclamations at the end, would have been dan- 
gerous to those active old bones of hers with any horse 
but Putterkoo in the shafts, or any driver less watch- 
ful than Richard at the reins. But they got off safely, 
and left her vibrating and punctuating and calling out 
after them with a great Nota Bene prefix to her sup- 
plementary suggestion : — 

“You stop as you come back along, mind! You ’ll 
be thirsty ayin, then! And there’s more where that 
came from ! ” 

“She lives there all alone,” said Richard, “since 
her brother died; except when she’s nursing. And 
she gives away her beer, and people come miles for it 
in the hot weather ; and she gets the best of the farm- 
ing for her brewing; there’s something growing for 
her in everybody’s lot.” 

“All alone?” repeated Anstiss. “What if she 
should be sick herself ? ” 

“Oh, she won’t. She may die, some time; I sup- 
pose she ’ll have to; but she never ’ll be sick. And 
if she should, she ’s got a cat that knows enough to go 
for the doctor.” 

How the breeze, and the sunshine, and the fragrance 
stirred together and poured down, and up, and around 


182 


HITHERTO. 


them! How the moss crushed pleasantly under the 
wheels, and the yellow butterflies and the little brown 
ones that look as if they ’d kept their winter gowns 
on, swarmed among the blossoming weeds, and how 
they smelled the strawberry patches afar off! How 
happy it was to be here with Richard and Hope, and 
old Putterkoo, and the peace and overflowing of the 
summer ! How safe Anstiss felt, and how she rested, 
and took in many things that she could get nowhere 
else, as well as Mrs. Cryke’s beer! 

What would she give for them ? Out of her life 
what had she grown and brought with her of her best, 
to render back? Will he ask her, some time? Ask 
her, offering her more; all of this, and greater, for 
her whole life long ? And will it be enough ? 

He will not be in a hurry; nobody will be in a 
hurry, here, “ to put things in her head ; ” he will not 
search for words, or for a time, to speak ; he has been 
silent a long while ; by and by it will speak itself, 
perhaps, when he cannot help it; in some common, 
unpolished, unstudied word it will come at last, but 
with a great heart-burst behind it that shall thrust it 
forth. And it will fall as at her feet. Will she take 
it up and care for it ? In the great, full world of 
powers, and knowledges, and possible joys and satisfy- 
ings, to what is she secretly reaching? What is at 
the spring-head of her restlessness that she as yet but 
half know^s, herself? Will she ever learn how it is 
that not always beyond the stars, or beneath the deeps, 
are the answers to life’s dearest askings, but that the 
word and the gift are nigh, even in the mouth and the 
heart that are thirsting and beseeching ? 

They left the horse under shady oaks, and walked 
on into open pastures. .Through a great patch of odor- 
ous sweet fern that gave out its spicy breath as they 
passed across it, and then upon a close turf again, over- 


BLANK VERSE; AND CLOVER. 


183 


laced everywhere with wild strawberry vines, and its 
pattern pronounced with bright red clusters of ripe 
fruit, making a hillside carpet of wonderful wild 
beauty. 

“Fruit right off the vines,” in a garden even, is an 
approach to perfection; hut out of an abundance like 
this, free and exhaustless, it is more; we find out 
then a part of the secret that we had not thought of 
before; it is not freshness, merely; it is the straight 
gift, the bounty for us ; with no strange hand between 
ours and the First Giver’s. This was in Richard 
Hathaway’s heart, silently and half aware; making it 
beautiful to take into his hand and give into hers; the 
joy of Adam in Eden, that every man repeats as he 
may for the woman whom he loves. The joy of the 
woman comes to be that there is this dear second 
hand. 

So they give and take — lovers — flowers, always, 
by an instinct; it is the first offering; and for the 
country dwellers, there is this fruit-gathering; they 
only know how beautiful it is ; it is a part of speech 
added for them only. We live and act in types, 
always ; we are learning, so, the short-hand of heaven. 
Richard Hathaway heaped up sweet parables to-day 
for Anstiss Dolbeare. The letters spelled strange 
words ; she had no key, as yet ; the rich ripeness and 
the fragrance and the beauty — stillness, kindness, and 
peace — were about her; these were all; she was at 
rest and happy with these. 

They walked all the way back, through the pasture 
and woodland, to Mrs. Cryke’s again; Richard leading 
the horse. When they came there they found somebody 
else before the door. Mrs. Cryke and her elbows were 
pouring beer and making punctuation for Allard Cope, 
who sat on his beautiful black horse, so perfectly ap- 
pointed; handsome and gay, himself, in his summer 


184 


HITHERTO. 


riding-dress, with the flush of pleasant exercise upon 
his cheeks, and an expectation "^Vuing in his eyes. 

Anstiss Dolbeare came up, in her blue and white 
gingham dress, with its small white linen collar and 
cuffs, her sunbonnet of the same, made with pretty 
drawings and frills, hanging back from her face like 
the calyx of a flower, and her white willow basket, 
full of red berries and green leaves, in her hand. 

He liked her just so, and she knew it; she knew at 
once that he had come all this way to find her; she 
would have supposed, a minute ago, if you had asked 
her, that he was in New York; but she understood it 
instantly. The Copes had got home. Home, all the 
way from Europe, the mother and Laura and Kitty; 
and Grandon, who had been away for years. Allard 
and his father had gone to meet them on their arrival ; 
they had all come to South Side, and he had been over 
to Uncle Royle’s already, and had traced her here. 

Richard Hathaway knew it too ; he could read 
faster than he could speak, this man with a large, 
silent heart; he was silent, perhaps, because he did 
read; he was noble enough for that, too. Anstiss 
should read, and compare, and learn her own mind; 
he could wait. He was noble enough not even to 
cloud or change, jealously, meeting this rival to whom 
he gave the road ; meeting him, in the midst of a lit- 
tle happiness that belonged quite to himself. No 
wonder that Anstiss interpreted none of his parables. 

Allard Cope’s straw hat was in his hand; the buff 
leather bridle hung loose about his horse’s neck, whose 
head was down among the sweet field-grass, and whose 
long, wavy mane touched its tops. His other hand 
took Anstiss Dolbeare ’s and gave it a glad pressure; 
then he swung himself down, put his arm through the 
bridle-loop, and stood beside her. 

He had always been the same ; blithe, frank, deb- 


BLANK VEBSE; AND CLOVER. 


185 


onair, and honest, in his boy-liking up to his man- 
loving that it was going to be; from the day when he 
had pulled flowers for her in his mother’s garden and 
told Augusta Hare what a pretty girl she was. What 
would Anstiss do between these two? One way or 
the other, it would seem that her life must brighten. 
Only they were such different ways! Yet her associa- 
tion had been alike with each, and as much with the 
sphere of one as of the other. It had been the single 
thread of melody played through the overture of her 
young years; taken up by two different instruments, 
at alternate times ; but the one beautiful strain that 
made her glad when she caught it, out from among 
notes that elsewhere confused themselves in intricacies 
and dissonances that might be — she supposed they 
were — all right to an ear which could recognize the 
principle that grouped and ordered them, but that for 
her had been so tiresome, — such a pain. She could 
not feel, yet, the richness of the inharmonic chords. 

Now, for a short measure, they were struck to- 
gether, and in unison. For Richard Hathaway was 
just as kind, just as careful, just as simple-friendly, 
as before. She liked sitting by his side in the open 
wagon, with Hope Devine and the strawberry baskets 
behind. She was quite herself, with these, away 
from Aunt Ildy’s watching and comment. It was 
pleasanter, so, talking with Allard Cope, as he rode 
upon her other side ; and if there were a secret pride 
and gladness in letting it be seen what else had come 
to her out of a world so rich and full to some, — if 
even she cared that his horse and his dress and his 
bearing were all so perfect and elegant ; that such a 
stamp of gentlemanhood was upon him, and that 
with all this he came to her and found something con- 
genial in her, even though she wore a gingham dress 
and a sunbonnet ; that he never minded that her gloves 


186 


HITHERTO. 


were off and her finger - tips rosy with strawberry 
j^icking; if there were a little triumph in the con- 
sciousness that she could be free and happy with him, 
she knew him so well, and was so sure of what he 
thought of her, — was it very had and unnatural in a 
girl of nineteen, who had not begun to find out her 
own mind yet, and who had only these few things to 
he glad and proud, of, — things that had been the same 
for years ? 

It was different when he stood talking with her 
afterward, alone, in the little front garden by the 
fence, among the roses; holding his horse’s bridle 
over the rails, putting off the good-by and the going. 
The shy, restless feeling came over her then, that she 
wished he would not stay so, and that the others had 
not left her. Hope had gone into the house, Richard 
had driven down to the barn; and Allard Cope would 
not come in to tea, neither would he get on his horse 
and go home. 

It was all very well up to a point like this ; she was 
not quite ready to he even shyly glad of moments 
like these. She was used to Allard Cope; she was 
proud and glad of his liking; she wished, sometimes, 
as she had said to Hope Devine, that she “belonged 
at the Copes’;” hut she could add, — “or here.” 
She could not sj^are any of her friendships or plea- 
sures ; but she would rather, since they were just what 
they were, that they should stay so, — for a while, at 
least. She dreaded anything coming that must be 
decisive; she never talked this over with herself, or 
apprehended definitely ; she was only vaguely divided 
between these sudden shrinkings and her strong long- 
ings and leanings. Into Allard Cope’s life — the 
life into which he might take somebody, some time, — 
she looked, as into a paradise; she was in love — 
with his mother, and the home atmosphere ; with him- 


BLANK VEBSE; AND CLOVEB. 187 

self, apart, she did not quite know; she did not want 
to ask herself, or to be asked. 

But all this belongs to Anstiss Dolbeare’s own re- 
membrances, that she can tell us best; what we came 
to look at here was what she did not see and could not 
tell. 

Richard Hathaway drove old Putterkoo down to 
the barn. 

His day’s pleasure had come and gone; now there 
were the cattle to feed, and the oats to be measured 
for the horses, and the bedding to be tossed down, 
and the mangers to fill. And then, when orders had 
been given and all looked to and done, and Putterkoo 
and Swallow had begun munching their grain, he went 
and stood by the fence and looked over into the three- 
acre clover-lot. 

What did it tell him, this field of clustering trefoils 
and white and purple blossoms? Out of its bosom 
what comfort of sweetness, or promise of bestowal and 
joy, came up to him? Or what did he tell to it, 
leaning down with his arms along the rail and his 
farmer’s straw hat pulled low upon his forehead? 

He and the late bees had it to themselves; a swal- 
low skimmed over, perhaps, for an instant, and the 
wind swept along the close pile of its dense leafage, 
stirring it in great masses, and shaking incense up 
into the air. 

Time to mow to-morrow. That was what he was 
thinking, perhaps? Time to put the sharp scythe 
under the tender green and the rose- purple, and the 
pure, sweet whiteness that had been growing together 
all the early summer-tide, and crowding the whole 
field with beauty? There was no such clover-patch 
as his for miles around. Hardly a stone in the gen- 
erous mellow earth beneath it. Full of heart and 
strength, — ready for any noble crop, — and given. 


188 


HITHERTO. 


this year, to luxury of green and a wealth of flowers. 
He should not sow it for next year in like manner. 
The plough must run under, and the harrow be fretted 
across, and the sober grain must go in. 

The bees went home, — the swallows were fluttering 
about the barn-eaves ; the wind slept ; and the clover 
was still. Richard Hathaway was thinking very defi- 
nitely now, with his head bent down upon his two 
hands joined together on the rail. 

“She shall never come here to be sorry for it. I T1 
never ask her into that. I ’ll wait and see. She ’s 
here, — and she always will be. The whole place is 
full of her. I ’d like it to be the only thing for her; 
is that mean, I wonder? Thinking it was, for so 
long, was what filled it up so to me. But if it is n’t, 
I can stand aside. I ’ve got stamina enough for 
that.” 

He got up straight with this, and pulled his hat 
off, and lifted up his manly head. There were drops 
upon his brow, and the twilight air was soft and 
cool. 

“I can’t talk much, maybe. But, God helping, I 
can hold my tongue. And He knows, I guess, which 
it takes most of a man to do. I don’t think that field 
was wasted, planting it so. It ’s been pleasant and 
pretty while it lasted, and it ’ll mix rich and sweet 
with the hay. We ’ll cut it to-morrow.” 

The time of the clover-bloom was over; the care- 
less sweetness was at an end. The scythe was to be 
put in. 

Richard set his hat upon his head again, and walked 
away. I do not believe he knew he had been reading 
himself another parable ; nevertheless, he and the 
clover had had this to say to each other. 

The dew, came down and rested on the blossoms; 
they were baptized unto their death. For the man. 


BLANK VERSE; AND CLOVER, 189 

he went home with the sweat of a heart-struggle upon 
him. That, also, was a chrism from Heaven. 

“By the sweat of his brow, he shall eat bread.” 
And a man’s bread is every word that proceedeth 
also out the mouth of God. 


CHAPTER XIII. 


WHAT ANSTISS DOLBEARE REMEMBERS. 

ALLARD COPE. 

It was in the winter after I was eighteen that Al- 
lard Cope began to come so much to Uncle Royle’s. 
The family had always been kind to me; hut, after 
all, their life and ours lay differently, and there were 
long intervals of time when I saw little or nothing of 
them. 

Margaret Edgell was married. Hers was the first 
wedding I had ever seen. What new mystery of 
beauty, and of a strange, holy, separating blessedness 
was around her, and between her and us girls and all 
her old self and life, when she stood there in the 
church with her white veil falling from her head to 
her feet, enshrining her, and the minister said solemn 
words, and they two bowed their heads, — she and the 
tall, handsome man beside her, — and so took the 
solemnity upon themselves and received the blessing; 
Avhen the organ sounded, and in the thrill and tremble 
of its music they moved softly down the aisle again, 
and he put her — his wife — in her white cloud of 
pure, enfolding draperies, into the carriage, — the only 
real coach in New Oxford except the private equipages 
at South Side, — and got in and sat down by her, and 
they drove away. 

Only to the Edgells’ home again, at first; there we 
saw them again for an hour or two longer; and then 
she went upstairs and took off all the cloud and the 
mystery and the fair types of her bridal consequence 
and insulation, and came down really among us, in 


WHAT ANSTISS DOLBEAEE REMEMBERS. 191 


her simple dark silk dress and her shawl and bonnet, 
to say good-by. 

Still, there was the unseen sacredness ; the grandeur 
and the riiystery of the new relation; I looked upon 
her as from a sudden distance, though she kissed me, 
and her husband shook me cordially by the hand, and 
they said I must come some time and see them in Fair- 
holm. There was something so strange and beautiful 
and exciting to me in it; it seized and possessed me 
as the near touch of deep and living things does seize 
and affect the young imagination. And there was so 
little that came into the dull sameness of my life with 
anything like the thrill of this ! 

I went home and made a silly speech at the tea- 
table. Out of the fullness of feeling, and the awe at 
something far off and yet close in a strange sympathy 
of possibility. I felt the reality; I spoke of the type. 

“Oh, she did look so lovely. Aunt Ildy! If ever 
I ’m married, I T1 be married in church, and have a 
long veil like hers ! ” 

Married!” Aunt Ildy withered me. I was a 
child. I had no business to think of such things. 
I ’d better wait till I was asked. I was n’t worth 
asking. I, married ! Preposterous ; forward ; un- 
seemly! All this tingled through me with her one 
word. 

I colored all up, burningly. I felt as if I had said 
some shameful thing. Yet only a year ago it would 
have been just the same for Margaret Edgell. And 
still, here it had come to pass. Why was it so im- 
proper up to the very minute ? I was only comforted 
to think that Uncle Royle had not come in. 

What right had she to make me feel so mean, and 
so ashamed? Afterward, it was the cause that I 
hardly dared to ask my own of life, or to know when 
I had got it. It put me false. It made me mistake 


192 


HITHEBTO. 


great meanings. It took me a long while, and it cost 
me pain ; worse, — it pained nobler lives than mine, 
before the years and God’s light set me straight and 
showed me clear. 

I saw Margaret Holcombe a few months after; only 
across the way; she had come just for the day to her 
father’s, and from my old window I looked up at hers, 
as in the childish times, and saw her there. 

Her pretty silk dress filled up the low window-seat 
with its shining folds and soft color. Her husband 
came in and laid a little basket of some small, ripe 
fruit upon her lap. Then she laughed and made room 
for him, and they two sat there together, dipping their 
fingers among the stems, and dividing, and eating, like 
happy children. 

It was the old story. Everything was beautiful 
and happy, even to a sublimity, over there. Here, I 
had the old inaccessible window - pane, and my chin 
stretched up to it, and my mending basket at my feet, 
just as it was years ago. 

I was not without self-chidings for my discontents. 
I was not without glimpses of better things in life 
than havings or doings, even then. That is, I knew 
the things were, and that I ought to find them ; that 
God had given me my life, and the place and the way 
of it ; and that if I were truly good, I should be glad 
in Him, and should not care. But I was not truly 
good, yet. I only wanted to be. And I wanted help, 
so! I wanted some great, strong, kindly, loving soul 
to stand close beside me; a motherly soul, or a fa- 
therly, it might have been ; hut I had missed that, and 
I was almost a woman now, and a blind asking for 
something yet possible stirred within me. I did not 
care particularly to sit and eat cherries in a pleas- 
ant window; that only signified something more. I 
would like to share great sunrises, and solemn, beau- 


WHAT ANSTISS DOLBEABE BEMEMBEBS. 193 


tiful sunsets ; deep starlights and grand thoughts ; 
questions and knowledges ; unspoken prayers, and 
griefs, and joys ; to be always sure of a hand in mine, 
and a thought above mine. I was only asking for what 
God only gives because He has first made every human 
spirit to yearn for it. 

The winter after I was eighteen, there was a change. 
I had new amusements, and I saw more of the little 
world about me. 

I went to the great New Oxford ball, that they used 
to have once a year, and that everybody went to ; the 
families from South Side, and the tradesmen in the 
town ; the large farmers, and their wives and daughters, 
from the country miles about, from Broadfields to 
Whiteacre. It was a grand old- times’ institution, 
surviving recent differences, and transgressing the lines 
of daily custom. 

Plain old women in snuff-colored silks and white 
neckerchiefs, with gold beads, like Mrs. Hathaway’s, 
round their throats, represented the rural dignities, 
and sat against the walls, proper and very strange. 
Plainer women still, in woolen stuffs, and indescrib- 
able combs and collars, gathered modestly in far cor- 
ners, and stretched and peered, with mild fidgets and 
solicitudes, above the crowd; doing their duty anx- 
iously of seeing all that was to be seen. Young peo- 
ple took the floor and danced together; the simplest in 
some freshness of white muslin and bright ribbons, or 
bran’ -new suits a little stiff in the collars, and unaccus- 
tomed “pumps” and white stockings; they who came 
down out of a grander everyday, quiet and graceful 
in their delicate best, as their mothers wore their sat- 
ins and velvets ; for unity, not contrast or pride ; the 
yeomanry and shopkeepers would have been more 
wounded if the gentle-people had slighted them with 
demi- toilet while they were doing their utmost. It 


194 


HITHERTO. 


was a gay, good time ; everybody was happy ; I wish 
they had such balls now. 

I had not been the year before ; Uncle Royle had 
been ill. Now he took us with him, he in all the 
preciseness and dignity of his black clothes and ruffled 
shirt; Aunt Ildy in black silk, and violet ribbons in 
her cap. He would have her go, notwithstanding her 
orthodoxy; and as she scrupulously kept out of the 
card-room, and was under no temptation to dance, I 
suppose she felt secure that the devil would get no 
more of her than he was otherwise entitled to ; never- 
theless, she did step round very much as if the floor 
burned under her feet ; but perhaps it was her tight 
black satin slippers. She had kept them for state oc- 
casions ever since I could remember, and she allowed 
herself great latitude and ease ordinarily, so that I 
think it became more difficult each year to wear them 
complacently. 

Is this very ill-natured of me? I do not mean it 
so. I respected Aunt Ildy. I loved her, in spite of 
her hardness ; and I never felt more gently affectionate 
than when she countenanced me in this great pleasure 
that night. 

But, oh, I was happy ! Frivolously, excitedly, 
foolishly happy; it almost seemed to me wickedly, 
brought up as I had been. Because I could not help 
being so glad that my blue dress was just as pretty as 
it could be, and that the white roses set so gracefully 
against my soft, full hair, and on the bosom of the 
low corsage ; and that Uncle Royle had given me money 
and bade me choose for myself, and I had been able to 
have the little blue silk slippers which matched my 
dress. This was of a kind of striped silk gauze ; the 
stripes were like floating, glistening ribbons with their 
satiny texture and rippling fall; and I had long rib- 
bons like them at my shoulders. I had never been 


WHAT ANSTISS DOLBEABE BEMEMBEBS. 195 


dressed like this before. Now something would hap- 
pen ! Now the story would begin ! 

I think it did begin. The Copes were there; after- 
* ward, Mrs. Cope and her daughters went out to Europe 
to join Grandon, and were gone four months ; but they 
were all there that night. 

They spoke to everybody whom they met; hut they 
took me right in among them, and kept me with them. 
We separated for the dances; Mrs. Cope would not 
allow her party to make up sets by themselves i they 
mixed simply and graciously among the rest. And 
that set the tone for all New Oxford and South Side; 
there was no sidling off, nor any airs, nor jealousy; 
everybody was happy, and went back into everyday 
the better for it. I think it was as good as many a 
church service. 

Everybody did not waltz then; and the polka and 
its kin were unknown. I waltzed ; I had learned at 
dancing-school with Allard and his sisters, and he asked 
me every time for his partner. I did not grow hot 
and tired, as some of the heavy girls did; I was small 
and slight; and Allard held me up so lightly. He 
told me I waltzed as if I could not help it; and so I 
did. 

I was whole-half happy that night, — if anybody 
would know what that means. Yet I think we all do. 
I was utterly happy with one side of me, — the gay 
child-side. And I owed it all to Allard Cope, nearly. 
With that gay, child-side of me, I loved him ; then, 
and once in a while, always. Why not quite and for 
all whiles? 

Hope Devine was there, too, with Richard Hatha- 
way and his mother, and I think there never was a 
better time than she had that night. 

When Hope was glad, her eyes, to which belonged 
a color of their own at all times, had a strange clear- 


196 


HITHERTO. 


ness. They seemed as if they were all light. You 
could see into them as you can see into the sun, — into 
an infinite, glowing ether. So clear and lucent were 
they that they gave you that feeling of depth, as the 
sun does, since, through its ineffable clearness, you 
discern nothing hut itself. It was like looking into a 
soul. 

I did not see very much of Richard that evening. 
I was with the Copes so much, and he had his mother 
and Hope to care for. I mean, I did not talk with 
him very much; I saw him, somehow, nearly all the 
time. I felt as if he saw me. I think it was because 
he was always such a silent man that you felt so the 
watching and the thinking of his friendship. I knew 
he was glad that I was so happy. I liked to have him 
see me dance, and I should have missed him out of the 
hall if he had gone away, even in the very midst of a 
waltz. 

Hope had never learned to dance. But that night 
she took it, as she took everything else, — by an in- 
spiration. Not the quadrilles; people danced steps 
then, and she would not try these, though I saw Rich- 
ard asking her. I danced two quadrilles with him 
myself ; he came and asked me for them very early. 

There was something of his goodness in his very 
dancing. He made no show or fuss about it ; he just 
moved with the music in a simple, unpretending way, 
that was by no means awkward either; and he seemed 
to be always caring for his partner. It was a kind of 
a similitude. He let you go from him in the figures 
with a gentleness and a looking-after; and then he 
stood in his own place in a quietness that was like 
trust, till you came to him again ; and then he claimed 
you and drew you back beside him in a way that was 
almost sheltering and tender; and when he went too, 
through the gay and intricate turns, it was like a joy 


WHAT AHSTIBS BOLBEABE BEMEMBERS. 197 

and a protection. He was no ball-room man ; he was 
a plain farmer, and danced perhaps only twice or thrice 
in a year ; but there was the poetry of it in the way 
he did it, as I never found it out from anybody’s else 
dancing. 

Hope got up at last, in the second country dance. 
She had watched the first one down, as if she danced 
it in her heart, and then she “saw how it went,” as 
she saw everything; and I only wish I could tell how 
she danced it. With Richard, of course; nobody else 
could have persuaded her. She was just like a spirit. 
She didn’t think of her feet or her hands; they took 
care of themselves; it was like beautiful script, — her 
winding in and out, and up and down; tracing some- 
thing swiftly and surely to make an end and a meaning 
out of it. There was not a halt, nor a break, nor a 
sharp, unskillful turn; every curve was a part and a 
hint of a perfect and graceful whole. If her move- 
ment had marked itself somehow as she went down 
the room, in the air, or along the floor, I wonder what 
it would have been. Something akin to the signs the 
swallows write against the dusk, or the flowers make 
in smaller print, nodding and swaying on their stalks, 
or the great inclusive hieroglyph the planets outline in 
heaven. 

But then she was always like that; it was born in 
her; it was no wonder she could dance without learn- 
ing. Lessons only teach by rote a segment of the 
harmony that describes itself continually in some few 
lives, and hers was one. If she swept a floor, or 
made up a bed, it was just the same. 

She stood with that happy look in her eyes, her hand 
still in Richard’s for an instant, at the foot, after they 
had finished. Something occurred to me at that mo- 
ment. I wondered — and I have wondered since — if, 
or why — But I will remember only one thing at a 
time. 


198 


HITHERTO. 


We ended with a “boulanger, ” — a great dance in 
a circle, all around the room, all of us together. I 
was between Allard Cope and Richard in this. Al- 
lard was my partner, and Richard was beyond me, 
with Hope again. This and the country dance were 
the only two things she joined in. 

There were basket figures, and grand right and left, 
and a Spanish dance figure, and all rounds, and prom- 
enades, and a “coquette.” Hope fluttered a minute, 
when it came to her, in this, and then turned suddenly 
and gave her hand again to Richard. He took her 
hand quietly, and she looked so content, that I won- 
dered again — why, and if. I came next, and I had 
half a mind to turn Richard too. At any rate, I ran 
away from Allard Cope, and before I thought I had 
got among some people I did not know, and then I 
broke right through the set, and turned Allard’s father, 
who stood looking on. There was a great laugh, and 
he laughed pleasantly, too, and with his old-school 
courtesy led me down the outside of the circle, and 
handed me back to his son. It drew looks upon me ; 
I had not meant it; it had just happened; but there 
was, in the midst of the embarrassment, a half-proud 
consciousness of the kind distinction with which they 
treated me, and that people saw it ; and something 
that I did not stop to think about made my heart beat 
suddenly. 

After that we broke up into a galop, up and down 
the long room, and then came the thinning, and the 
stopping, and the scattering away. 

Somebody ran against Hope in the galop. She 
herself was like a sunbeam, that glanced by or paused 
softly, always ; she never would have run against any- 
body; hut some one blundered against her, and almost 
threw her down. Richard’s strong arm was around 
her waist instantly ; I saw him catch her so, and hold 


WHAT ANSTISS DOLBEARE REMEMBERS. 199 


her till he was sure she had her footing, and was not 
hurt. Hope’s face was bright all over with a sudden 
blush. It was the mishap, the startle, perhaps; but 
her eyes were down, too. It was a different expres- 
sion from any I was used to in her. She was always 
so up-looking, so straight and frank. If anything 
happened, she took it just as it was, simply, and with- 
out disturbance. And this was only for an instant, 
while she answered his question and moved gently 
away out of his hold. I do not think she knew it her- 
self, for in an instant more it had quite passed, and 
her face had the old, dear, happy look. 

They did not dance any more. That was the last. 
And Allard Cope took me up to the dressing-rooms 
then, to find Aunt Ildy, and I put up her cap in the 
box, and found her cloak and hood and moccasins for 
her, and put on my own wraps, and Uncle Royle came 
and looked in at the door, and we joined him, and 
went downstairs. 

Somebody at the foot held out an arm for me as I 
came down behind them. I took it without looking 
up. I thought it was Allard Cope’s. We went out 
from the passage that seemed dim after the lights 
above, and stood on the snow-path in the moonlight. 
Then I saw it was Richard Hathaway. 

“You have had a good time to-night.” He did 
not ask, — he said it ; he had seen my good time ; he 
had watched it. 

“Oh, yes! ” I answered, with all my heart. 

“I am glad! ” 

I wonder why this did not seem much to me. I 
know now how much it was; how generous it was; 
how those three words held more of a man in them 
than the finest sentence could. 

He did not say another syllable, except “good- 
night,” after be had seen me safe into the wagon- 


200 


HITHERTO. 


sleigh. There was nothing a hit romantic about Rich- 
ard Hathaway. But his good-night meant a real 
wish; I felt that, then. Somehow, the grasp of his 
hand stayed about mine long after we drove off and he 
left us. He did not move until we had driven off. 
It had been pleasure and excitement, upstairs, all the 
evening. Down here at this last moment came a 
reminder of a rest; of something waiting for me to 
return to ; something sure, and for always. 

I do not know what took Allard away, just as we 
left ; I think he had meant to see me down ; but it 
had happened so. Richard had not come in the way; 
but he had watched there at the stair-foot till I came 
down, alone ; and then he had been ready. 

He always did watch so; and I always found him 
ready. So that it came to be a habit in my life, if I 
had a pain, or a want, or a fear, that I thought of 
him ; he would have been so sure to pity, if he knew ; 
and to help, if he could. 

If there is a heart in the world like this, with a 
friendship in it for you, it is a divine thing, and life 
is rich. Yet you may be restless; and you may not 
know that it is enough. That knowledge grows only 
out of the yesterdays. 

It was after this that Allard Cope came so much, 
all the winter and spring, to our house. His eldest 
sister, Mrs. Oxenaye, with her husband and two chil- 
dren, came to South Side to stay, after the others 
went away. They went rather suddenly, with a fam- 
ily of friends from New York, in one of the wonderful 
new ocean steamers ; and they were to come home with 
Grandon in the summer. Grandon had turned out 
such a noble man. He had followed his scientific 
studies abroad, and had become associated with some 
famous astronomers and mathematicians, and his name 
was connected with new and important calculations. 


WHAT ANSTISS DOLBEARE REMEMBERS. 201 


He was coming home full of great plans and hopes for 
science in his own country. 

Allard used to lend me books, and sometimes bring 
me flowers. It was pleasant, and there was nothing 
for me to do, at first, but to be pleased. It would 
have been absurd to be in a hurry to put on airs of 
caution to Allard Cope, as if his kindness meant any- 
thing new. I did not care to think about it yet, if 
it did. 

How could I tell — anything — yet ? 

Once in a while some sudden feeling would come 
over me, of one or the other contradictory nature. A 
thrill, sometimes, — with that great heart-beat, — at 
a possibility that I would not shape to myself; but 
that flashed a bright vision upon me of what might 
come real — to somebody. His home — and his mo- 
ther — and his brother, so high and distinguished — 
and the whole family place and consequence. A life 
of refinement, and access to noble and beautiful things 
and companionships. I remembered those days shared 
with me out of this life of theirs ; I remembered that 
night with the stars. 

I was pleased, in my lower self, to have Aunt Ildy 
see what she did see ; I was stung with a craving for 
her better thought of me. It was partly a mere in- 
stinct for truth and justice ; I knew there was more of 
me than she measured. What if — I got so far, 
sometimes ; but I never said the rest. Yet the ques- 
tion asked itself of me in the under-consciousness, and 
it went to make up the force that swayed me this 
way. 

And then, again, it would be the shrinking, — the 
unreadiness; at some special word or look it would 
come, and put a trouble in my heart. Was I right? 
What ought I to do ? How could I tell ? 

This is the trouble with a woman; there is no in- 


202 


HITHERTO. 


terval ; from the minute it begins she must act as from 
a certainty ; people will judge her, looking back from 
the end; and for her it is an impropriety to be looking 
forward. She must “know what she is about,” while 
she is making up her mind. She must see and not 
see, feel and not feel; her conscience interferes before 
her heart can interpret itself. 

It was pleasant to be with Allard Cope; I was 
proud of his caring for me ; I should have missed it if 
he had not. I was uneasy if he kept away longer than 
usual; and yet, half the time, I was afraid of his 
coming and of what it meant. 

In the midst of this I went out again to stay with 
the Hathaways. 

And then Allard began to come over there. 


CHAPTER XIV. 


RED HILL. 

It was pleasant June weather — the last of the 
month — when I went to the farm ; just the season 
for drives and country plans. 

The first time Allard came he met us at Red Hill, 
on our way home from a strawberrying, the second day 
of my visit. And then nothing would do but he must 
get his sisters out there, — they had just come home, ^ 
all of them together, from Europe, — and they must 
pick strawberries, and drink Mrs. Cryke’s beer. 

This was the beginning of a good deal of intercourse, 
to and fro, between South Side and the farm. 

What could I do to help that ? People took sum- 
mer drives from far and wide, to taste Mrs. Cryke’s 
beer, and go round Red Hill in the sunset. Why 
should not the Copes come? It was their all coming, 
and our getting all together so, that made it impossi- 
ble for me to prevent Allard. And he was over now, 
nearly every day, on one errand or another. 

One night we had a regular party to the top of the 
hill. We had never been yet, in all this time, to get 
the jasper Richard had promised me years before. 
There had always been something else doing, when I 
was at the farm, and going up Red Hill seemed to be 
the thing for a party. So at last it happened that 
though I had lived all my life within half a dozen 
miles of it, I climbed it for the first time now, with 
Hope and Richard, and the Copes and Augusta Hare, 
who had come to South Side again to make a visit. 
She had been abroad, too, with a party of friends, 


204 


HITHERTO. 


only last year. She traveled about a great deal. She 
spent most of her summers at some gathering place 
at springs or seashore, — the mountains were not in- 
vented then, — or in visiting about ; and her winters, 
sometimes at Washington, sometimes in New York, 

and sometimes in H . Her old engagement had 

come to nothing. It lasted just long enough to give 
her a great school-girl ^clat and preeminence, and then 
something happened which made another interesting 
story and excitement for the young world that had 
time to tell and hear it over into a tradition that it 
knew by heart ; something in which she played a very 
spirited and dramatic part, distinguishing herself as 
pmch in the dismissal of her lover as in the having one 
at all. But the really best of it was that it occurred 
in such early youth that she had had time to outgrow 
it in the memories of thoughtful and sensible people 
who had not learned it by heart at the time, and to 
whom it might not have appeared such an advantage. 

So now she was at the Copes’ again. 

Grandon Cope drove over with Augusta and Laura 
and a friend — Miss Bathbun — to whom they wished 
to show Red Hill. Kitty and Allard rode. 

Hope and Richard and I just went over in the open 
wagon, as usual. Hope had tea, and all sorts of nice 
things in baskets, behind, ready for our gypsy supper. 
Of course we could not have done without Hope, any 
more than we could without the baskets. 

Hope had a position at the farm and in Broadfields 
such as is peculiar, I suppose, to a New England fam- 
ily and neighborhood. The Hathaways took her in, 
from the outset, as one of themselves ; she grew up so, 
and nobody troubled themselves to go back of that, or 
to inquire how she had begun. The fact was accom- 
plished. And besides, if they had troubled, she be- 
•gan, after all, just as they did, only up in New 


RED HILL. 


205 


Hampshire. She came of farming people, too. She 
was just a bright, clever New England girl, and her 
place was anywhere where Providence might please to 
put her; and Providence, without the least irrever- 
ence, pleases to put New England men and women in 
a good many different places, sometimes, before it has 
done with them. We are not planted, like our oaks 
and pines, or even according to the catechism. 

It was an instance of how we do shade and blend 
together here, and how one tone of uniting color runs 
through the varying tints, that circumstances could 
bring it about that the Copes and Hope Devine should 
meet here on Red Hill, taking tea together quite on 
equal terms for the time being. She was one with 
the Hathaways; the Hathaways were important and 
respected people in this country neighborhood, and 
they were my friends and entertainers ; and I was ad- 
mitted, from just an Stage below, perhaps, but out of 
good family claim, and what they pleased to consider 
personal qualifications, to their intimacy and friend- 
ship. There is more fine line-drawing in cities, among 
people who truly, after all, are far more on a level; 
but the real country still holds, or did then, its good 
old healthy backbone, which is its strength; and no 
one vertebra unlocks itself foolishly from its neighbor, 
up and down. 

I think I never saw so handsome a man as Grandon 
Cope. He was beginning, even at twenty-eight, to 
grow a little stout ; but he was built upon a plan that 
would bear this amplifying. A little, small-featured 
man, who grows squat, and whose eyes shut up as his 
flesh increases, may well deprecate the gain. It turns 
him into just what he is, at some root of his nature. 
But a man who grows grand and full, — who seems as 
if his heart were big enough to require more body to 
hold it than other people’s, — and whose intellect sits 


206 


HITHERTO . 


supreme on an ample brow and kindles within large- 
orbited, deep-set eyes, — whose limbs are firm and 
free, to stride forth into his life-action, to stretch out 
a broad-handed grasp, and to gather into strong, shel- 
tering embrace that which he would hold next the 
great, generous heart, — this man is one of God’s 
glorious creatures, and such a man was Grandon Cope. 
There were a few shining threads among the close, 
brown locks upon his temples, thus early. They only 
glistened at the ends, like a slight powdering of silver 
grains, and they helped, artistically, as a point of 
color, to fill out the lustre of the face whose deeply 
brilliant eyes and perfect teeth made its smile, or its 
least movement in speech, a resplendence. 

I had as much idea of Grandon Cope taking any 
special notice of me as I had of Red Hill bowing its 
crest before my ascending feet. I talked and walked 
with Allard and Hope. Richard helped the young 
ladies up the rough ascent, and they seemed well 
pleased with his quiet, manly efficiency and his becom- 
ing bearing. They made him talk, as much as he 
ever did; and to make Richard Hathaway talk was 
to draw forth something real and significant, in so far 
as it went. Mr. Grandon Cope had Miss Rathbun 
and Augusta to his share, naturally, as the elders of 
the party. Walking behind these, I looked and lis- 
tened. 

We kept this order nearly all the way up hill. Rich- 
ard carried a large basket; Hope had a small, light 
one, which, having cream and vanity cakes in it, she 
would by no means trust to other hands. Mr. Cope 
and Allard were each laden, also, with some contribu- 
tion from South Side. I had the basket of sponge 
cake. One of the farm boys, who had ridden over on 
Swallow, trudged in the rear, with frequent halts, 
bearing the few articles of table furniture that were 


RED HILL. 207 

needed, with the spirit-lamp and the water-boiler, and 
some spoons. 

“If the fun of the world is n’t the work, after all, 
why picnics ? ” said Grandon Cope, looking back and 
laughing. 

“Only, perhaps,” said I, as I met his look, “we ’re 
so used to our pack that we don’t know how to go 
without it.” 

It took very little to amuse Grandon Cope. I have 
noticed this in other men of great thought and deep 
study. The laugh was always perdu in his eyes and 
on his lips. I believe it is the greatest fools who go 
gravest through the world. If the heart and brain 
hold anything much, it overflows easily. He laughed 
again at my answer, and then the quietness came back, 
as he said, still in the same tone, however : — 

“I wonder if we shall feel so about our troubles, 
some time ? ” 

It set me thinking. If all my troubles rolled 
away from me suddenly, what should I be, — the rest 
of me? Very like, perhaps, to something from which 
the law of gravitation had withdrawn itself, it oc- 
curred to me, all at once, to imagine. 

I did not know that Mr. Cope observed me further, 
or saw that I was still thinking. It startled me when 
I heard him say, unexpectedly, “Well?” And I 
looked up to see that he was speaking to me. At the 
same time, Hope had fallen back a little, and he 
dropped into her place by my side. Allard had to go 
on, then, with the others. The Copes were always 
polite. 

I knew what he meant. I like monosyllables. I 
like brief, snatchy talk. I can’t bear a person who 
begins like a lawyer’s deed, upon every topic, with a 
“ Know all men by these presents, ” and goes on with 
whereases and aforesaids. 


208 


HITHERTO. 


It was like a little whet to a knife, that “Well? ” 

— it sharpened and brightened me up. 

“Half a dozen things,” I said, answering what I 
knew he meant to ask. “The old woman that had 
her skirts cut off, — the draggle and rags, I suppose, 

— and wondered ‘if it he I.’ Pains and pearls, — 
bad for the oyster, and yet the best of him ; and an 
apple that I ’ve sometimes tried to get all the knurls 
out of before I ate it, and then found there wasn’t 
anything left hut a few sposhy crumbs.” 

“ Have you found all that out ? ” 

“No. It ’s only a translation, yet. I can read it, 
that ’s all. I suppose I shall go on digging out the 
knurls and spoiling the apple.” 

Why is it that a certain part of ourselves comes 
readily and inevitably forth of us in speech to certain 
persons? I should never have spoken so to Allard, or 
even to Richard Hathaway. Perhaps to Hope De- 
vine I might say some such things ; hut just imagine 
me talking like that to Miss Chism! And here was a 
man, a stranger, far above me every way, of whom I 
was afraid when I stopped to think about it, and some- 
thing in him laid hold of my secret, inmost feeling 
and drew it to the light. Out there, it began to look 
impertinent. I colored and stopped. 

“It ’s a good thing to adopt a trouble,” said Gran- 
don Cope. 

Borrow ! ” 

“No. Accept, rather. Grow round it, as the 
roots grow round the stones. Or as the prettiest things 
in pleasure-grounds come of the disfigurements that 
could not be got rid of, old stumps made into pedestals 
for flowers and vines, and rocks heaped all over with 
lovely plants that flourish nowhere else.” 

“That ’s more translating. And the same is in 
homelier things. I think I do like a dress better after 


RED HILL. 


209 

I have turned and darned it, or spilled something on 
it and got the spot out.” 

“Ladies used to wear patches for beauty-spots.” 
“But then — the patches weren’t blisters!” A 
long breath came in between the two parts of my 
sentence. 

Mr. Cope looked at me earnestly. He laughed, at 
the same time; but the look came through the laugh, 
from very kind and understanding eyes. It was as if 
he saw, over my shoulder, all at once, what hook it 
was out of which I was translating. I wonder it did 
not seem more strange to him. He could not have 
had a copy of his own, anywhere, that he had ever 
learned a lesson from. I thought so then; later, I 
have almost come to the belief that it is the primer, 
and that the whole school learns it. 

“To go back to the beginning of our interpreta- 
tions,” he said. “Did you know it is sometimes eas- 
ier to carry both hands full than one ? ” 

“Two pails of water, with a hoop round them, — 
yes; but then I couldn’t carry one pail — far! ” 

“Only a little basket, with some cake in it? Well, 
we shall be glad of the cake, when we get to the top. 
What do you think is in my basket ? ” 

“Something a great deal better than mine. I am 
sure of that.” 

“It is heavier. See! ” 

“Yes. But you are bigger and stronger.” 

“ Shall I — show you ? ” He finished the sentence 
so, after a break. I think he was going to say some- 
thing different at first, but remembered that we were 
talking in metaphors. I think he was going to ask if 
he should help me carry mine, and he was not a man 
to make a foolishness like that. His very fancies 
were true, and fitted themselves to no absurdities. I 
did not think of all this then, though. 


210 


HITHERTO. 


He lifted the lid a little, and showed me, lying in 
layers among soft, snow-white cotton, great rosy 
peaches from his father’s hothouses. 

“We don’t know each other’s burdens, — the 
weight or the beauty of them; and we don’t often 
know what is inside our own. We shall find that out 
when we get to the top.” 

“What a jumble we have been talking! ” he began 
again, after a minute in which I had found nothing 
more to say. . 

“And yet it has been all one thing,” I answered. 
“I am very much obliged to you, Mr. Cope.” 

“For letting you see the peaches? ” 

“Yes.” 

“We are almost up, now. Feel the breeze. 
That ’s the air that never quite gets down into the 
valleys, but only sweeps over the crests.” 

Mr. Cope took off his straw hat, and stood still a 
moment. 

We had come out into the “thinning;” where 
there were open spaces of crisp turf, and rocky knolls 
bare to the winds and the sunlight. The pine-trees 
stood here and there in groups. We had spread our- 
selves as we ascended into this out of the closer path. 
Mr. Cope and I had got away to the right of the 
others, and had had our talk mostly to ourselves. 

“Oh, Mr. Cope! Here is the jasper! ” 

I picked up a piece at my feet. A great rock 
cropped out of the sod, with the rich, dull red upon it 
that could be fretted to such a lustre. 

The old thought came back to me again. 

“Perhaps you can tell me, now,” I said. 

“Perhaps. What?” 

“About the meanings. Jasper, and sapphire, and 
chalcedony; emerald, sardonyx, sardius, and chryso- 
lite; beryl, topaz, chrysoprase, jacinth, and amethyst. 


RED HILL. 211 

I want to know them all, — the twelve stones: the 
wall of the New Jerusalem.” 

He stood with his bared head lifted up in the fresh 
breeze against the clear sky. Something noble came 
into his face, listening to what I said. It was the 
answer, dawning. 

“We want to know them all, — yes; if we can he 
worthy. But it is hard reading, some of it. We 
should skip some of the lines if we had our way. We 
should build a low, poor wall, of but one stone, per- 
haps. See ! This crimson that lies at the beginning, 
— it is the color of passion, suffering. Out of the 
crimson we climb into the blue, — that is truth and 
calm. Beyond, is the white, glistening chalcedony, 
for purity ; and next flashes out the green, — the hope 
of glory. Then they mingle and alternate, — the ten- 
derness, and the pain, and the purifying; it is the 
veined sardonyx stands for that, — the life-story. 

“The blood-red sard is the sixth stone, — the whole 
triumphant love that contains and overwhelms all pas- 
sion; the blessedness intense with its included anguish. 
It is the middle band ; the supreme and central type ; 
crowning the human, underlying the heavenly. Then 
the tints grow clear and spiritual; chrysolite, golden- 
green, touched with a glory manifest; the blending of 
a rarer and serener blue, — the wonderful, sea-pure 
beryl. Then, the sun-filled rapture of the topaz; and 
chrysoprase, where flame and azure find each other, — 
the joy of the Lord, and the peace that passeth under- 
standing. In the end, the jacinth purple and pure 
amethyst, into which the rainlDow refines itself at last, 
hinting at the far distance of ineffable things. For it 
is the story of the rainbow, too.” 

“I knew it was! ” 

“It was a sublime sentence that was written on the 
cloud to stand forever. Colors have always been types. 


212 


HITHERTO. 


How strange it is that, living amidst signs and em- 
blems, — living hy them as we do, since the lifting of 
an eyelid, the quiver of a muscle, the sweep of an 
arm, the gesture of a finger, speak more meanings 
from the commonest niian to man, than books-full of 
words, — we should trouble and dispute about speeches 
and writings, as if nothing had been given to the world 
except hy these. We look a man in the face to under- 
stand him. Why not look in God’s face? ” 

That was grand. Because it was spoken so simply, 
looking right in my face, as he had said all the rest ; 
not with the changed tone of a half-ashamed solemnity, 
such as the name of God comes in with, if it come 
at all, to most men’s talk. The beauty of his thought 
led directly up to this. Of the truth and the power 
of it nothing else could come, and nothing less. 

“‘Like a jasper and a sardine stone.’ Do you 
remember where that comes in again ? ” 

I knew the Revelation almost by heart. 

“Oh, yes,” I answered. “‘He that sat upon the 
throne was to look upon like a jasper and a sardine 
stone, and there was a rainbow round about the throne 
in sight like unto an emerald. ’ It is the same thing, 
right over.” 

“Yes, and the meaning proved. Out of two or 
three witnesses every word shall be established. How 
full the words are of the depth and glow that require 
such a rich similitude ! The wall of stones was like 
an alphabet ; it gave you the key to the whole radiant 
language. Without such key to its types, no wonder 
people puzzle over the Apocalypse. It is a strange 
denoting of the aspect of the Son of man, taken at the 
mere letter; ‘like unto a jasper and a sardine stone;’ 
hut read them as the fervent attesting colors of suffer- 
ing and love, and how full the Face and Presence are, 
so briefly likened ! Did you ever think how much color 


RED HILL. 


213 


says to us ? How it puts in mind of things ^^?^speaka- 
ble ? The depth of the sky, — how should we know it 
without the blue? The rest and the shadow of the 
earth and the great trees, — what would they be with- 
out the green? So that a mere ribbon comes to give 
a feeling; of freshness, or brightness, or coolness, or 
warmth, or softness. To me, words have colors. 
Standing for things and for meanings, they take the 
shades of them. People’s names have tints, by which 
I like or dislike them.” 

“That seems strange,” I said. “Tome, words and 
names have shapes and attitudes rather. Think of 
‘reach,’ for instance. You can feel the stretch of it. 
And ‘grasp,’ and ‘leap,’ and ‘crouch,’ and ‘grovel,’ 
and ‘lift.’ You can see the posture of them all.” 

“Those are words of attitudes. But you are right, 
as well as I. ‘Tender,’ and ‘true,’ ‘strong,’ ‘brave,’ 
‘great,’ ‘tiny;’ you can see the delicate touch, the 
unswerving line, the swell and tension of the muscle, 
the hare, free, unflinching brow, the expansiveness and 
the holding, the mite that you look closely or down- 
ward to perceive. I can read them so, but they come 
to me most easily in shades. It is just what I said 
before. Words are only the arbitrary signs. We 
talk and think in living types. If language does not 
suggest these, it has no meaning. ‘In the beginning 
was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the 
Word was God.’ How can people look and not read? 
and in the crowding and fullness of it all, ask for ‘a 
sign’ ? ” 

This was so real — so different from the usual set- 
apart tone from anything that approaches topics of 
faith — that it filled me full of a new and wonderful 
warmth and glow of perception and gladness. I won- 
dered, too, at Grandon Cope; for I had heard, even 
then, other things of men of learning, and of the Anti- 
Christ of Science. 


214 


HITHERTO. 


I spoke something of this to him. 

“I thought,” I said, “that scientific men came, 
often, to doubt — could not reconcile — these things ? ” 

“ How do you look at a picture ? ” 

I did not quite consciously comprehend; hut I had 
an intuition, by which I answered to his meaning. 

^^Into it,” I said. 

“Exactly. Some people measure the lines, and fit 
a theorem to the proportions, and analyze the pigments 
and the mixtures. That is one finding out, — the 
mechanical how of it, perhaps ; the thing itself is taken 
differently. ” 

We came, now, upon the great, round top of Red 
Hill. The sun, far down the west, sent horizontal 
shafts of light upon us, and below, the woods and fields 
lay in cool masses of shadow. The quick breeze found 
us out here, too, searchingly ; and we were glad of the 
shawls we had brought with us. The dry, warm, 
lichen-cushioned rocks gave us pleasant seats, and the 
turf itself was our table. We had hot tea in ten 
minutes, out of the spirit-boiler. We drank this, and 
ate fruit and cake, and hardly knew which we tasted, 
or where the cheer and strength came in from, — 
these, or that which we took in at our eyes; all the 
hillsides, and meadows, and grain-fields, and river- 
hends, and gleams of ponds, and glooms of woods, and 
grouped villages, and scattered farm buildings; the 
wide, round, perfect sphere of the blue sky, with its 
clouds turning golden and bronze in the light and 
shadow of the coming sunset, and soon to be gorgeous 
with crimsons and purples and saffrons, and intenser 
flecks of glory that would not be color, but pure flame ; 
the greens that turned black, and indigo, and blue, and 
faintest violet, with the lines of farther distances, hill 
lapping over hill, and forest stretching behind forest, 
till — there was the word of the rainbow again, with 
its near and far, its first and last. 


RED HILL. 


215 


'‘Are you comfortable, Anstiss?” Richard came 
and asked of me. He had been fetching water from 
the little spring on the other side the brow; opening 
baskets, helping Hope, spreading shawls ; making 
everybody comfortable. Now he came and sat down 
beside me. 

“Isn’t it beautiful? ” 

All my thought of the last half hour was in my 
question, to my own feeling; but how should it have 
been to his? What was there in my commonplace 
word, to convey it? Why should I have been dis- 
turbed and disappointed when he only said, in an- 
swer : — 

“Yes; there’s no better outlook in forty miles. 
It ’s a pleasant country; and a pretty pleasant world, 
it seems to me sometimes, Anstiss.” 

How did I know how much might be behind that ? 
Wkat right had I to judge his thought as less than 
mine ? He had got his pleasant, peaceful word out of 
it all, as straight from God as any. In his eyes there 
was a rest and a gentleness that were reflections of 
that which spoke about us, in the air, the light, the 
color, and the stillness. There was something large 
and strong, too; the expanding of some soul-horizon; 
the waiting for some hour of night and loss that might 
come between him and the day. I look back, and see 
it, now. “Diversities of gifts; but the same Spirit; ” 
why could I not read it then? 

“I have found out about the jasper, Richard.” 

I would have brought him my new treasure of mean- 
ing and feeling, as a child brings home a gift to show. 

I had asked him the question years before; of 
course he had forgotten it. 

“Jasper? Oh, yes; there ’s plenty of it, the com- 
mon red kind. But sometimes you can find a piece 
of ribbon jasper, with the white streaks in it. Have 
you seen that ? ” 


216 


HITHERTO. 


“Oh, there it is again; that’s the meaning of it, 
Richard. That’s the chalcedony; that comes after- 
ward ; that is rare wdth the red. Oh, how beautiful 
it all is ! ” 

He looked at me with only a sympathy for the fact 
of my pleasure. 

I was restless that he should know. I forgot how 
it had come, by no forcing, but a gentle, natural fol- 
lowing, and a gradual help and answering, to me. I 
forgot that I had not begun, — that I could not begin, 
with another, perhaps, at the very beginning which had 
told itself to me. I forgot that he was reading, all 
the while, another leaf, it might be, of the self-same 
book. 

“I mean about the wall in Revelation. The types 
of the stones, and the way things come after each 
other. Suffering, and love, and truth, and purity; the 
red jasper, and the blue sapphire, and the white chal- 
cedony; then the brightness of the emerald, and the 
mixed sardonyx, and the deep-red sard; and purer 
green, and clearer blue, — gladness and fu2illment, and 
rest ; the topaz, and chrysoprase, — the joy unspeak- 
able, and the perfect peace ; and jacinth and amethyst, 
the colors of the heavenly beyond, — like those far-off 
hills.” 

He did not know the wall by heart, as I did, stone 
by stone, and the colors of them; the unity and the 
coherence of the interpretation could not appear to him 
as it did to me, in the moment of my rapid utterance 
of what had become so familiar. He sat and looked 
quietly at the far purple hills, and let me be, as it 
were, with my fancies and my enthusiasm. 

“Don’t you see, Richard? ” I asked impatiently. 

“I don’t know. There seems to be a good deal of 
it,” he said, in his pleasant, half- jocose fashion. “I 
suppose you might make out almost anything, that 
way. ” 


RED HILL. 


21T 


“You could n’t make things that would hold to- 
gether, unless they were true. Any more than you 
could tell that two and two made four, if once in a 
while they happened to make five. Or if apples did, 
and peaches didn’t.” 

“Figures always turn out according to rule. They 
can’t make mistakes.” 

' “They ’re only the signs of things that fit together. 
And when you ’ve got the things, you don’t stop for 
the figures. You can see that two apples are just as 
many again as one without doing the sum. It ’s the 
seeing that ’s the beginning of it, and of everything. 
When a good many people have seen the same thing, it 
becomes a piece of knowledge, to be handed about. 
When a good many people have had the same thought, 
or the same feeling, and they come of the same causes, 
or hang together and explain each other, then they 
make words for them, and the words hang together; 
and there ’s something reasonable and established; 
something that nobody stops to dispute about. But 
you ’ve got to believe your own or somebody’s else eyes 
to begin with ; inside or outside eyes, whichever it may 
be. How do you know what blue is, at all ? ” 

“I don’t,” said Richard simply. 

“But it gives you a kind of a feeling. It ’s one 
thing, and red ’s another. One seems soft, and the 
other bright. And soft and bright are feelings, too, 
that everybody ’s had till they ’ve grown into words. 
Richard, everything is a word. And the meaning is 
the whole of it. All creation is one great talk, I 
think. ” 

Richard Hathaway laughed out. It jarred with me ; 
I meant something grand and solemn. I did not want 
to assume grandeur and solemnity; I hated to seem 
to try to be eloquent. I put it into common words ; 
but I meant what I think the first chapter of John’s 


218 


HITHERTO. 


Gospel means. And Richard thought it was only 
funny. 

I got up and left him sitting there, and went over 
and joined Hope, to help her put up the cups and 
plates. 

Twenty minutes after, when the last mellowness of 
the sunset was gliding away through the heavens and 
over the hillsides, and we began to speak of going 
home, I saw him sitting there still, by himself, with 
his head against the palm of his hand. 

I wondered if I had hurt him. I could not bear to 
do that, he was so kind and true. I went over to him 
again, and spoke. 

“Come, Richard; we’re going. What are you 
making out now? It ’s your turn, you see.” 

He took me by surprise, looking up at me in the 
way he did. His face was full ; if his lips had spoken 
it all, I felt as if I might have trembled before it. 
But all he said was, — 

“You mustn’t think, Anstiss, that I don’t like 
your thoughts. Or to have you tell them to me. I 
was only pleased at your little ways of saying things.” 

It was not much; but it was so sorry and patient. 
As if he had been wholly wrong, and I had not been 
rude and unfriendly. As if his laugh had been any- 
thing but the honest happiness he always felt with me 
and in my ways from the time I was a little child 
until now. He spoke the word “pleased” as the New 
England country-folk do speak it, meaning amused, — 
touched gently with a sense of droll aptness. It is 
another remnant of the old decorums that kept all 
things chastely under. I have heard a plain, quiet 
woman, subdued by long Puritanic proprieties, say of 
an occurrence utterly and convulsively funny, — “I 
was pleased. I had to smile.” 

There is something quaint and gentle in the word 


BED HILL. 


219 


so used; it just expressed Richard’s meaning; he was 
kindly, even tenderly amused; at my way, not at the 
thought I had and tried to speak. But when I had 
wanted him to seize the thought and help me on with 
it, ah, there we were back again, at the very thing 
that had offended me. 

“I didn’t mind the laughing, Richard, if you had 
only cared! ” 

'“Perhaps I do care; but I can’t tell much of my 
carings, Anstiss.” 

Something made his lips shut tightly after he said 
this, as if otherwise they might have quivered. 

How different he was from Grandon Cope; how 
little he satisfied me in one part of my nature ; how 
thoroughly he calmed and rested me in another I 

“Nevermind, Richie,” I said. “We won’t talk; 
we ’ll just have a good time.” 

But for all that, when we got into twos and threes 
again, going down the hill, Allard was with me. I 
think Mr. Grandon Cope made a step or two toward 
me once, as if he had something to say, and would 
have joined me ; but it seemed as if he knew he would 
interrupt Allard, for he glanced at him and turned 
away. There was a kind, brotherly look in his eyes 
as he did so. 

I was reading very fast, then. A great deal came 
to me that I did not spell out as it came, but took 
rather as we take in the sense of whole printed pages 
sometimes, hardly conscious of the word-points that 
we catch, but only of a general complexion. Every- 
thing was making me more and more at home with the 
Copes, as a family ; making me more and more to feel 
how cordially they all received and liked me, and how 
little I could spare that intercourse and liking out of 
my life. 

“Grandon is delighted with you, Anstiss,” said 


220 


HITHERTO. 


Allard, as we walked forward together. And then he 
went on to tell me what a splendid fellow Grandon 
was, and what a difference his coming back had made 
at home. “We are a whole family, now, I can assure 
you. We never seem to be quite that when Gran is 
away. Everybody goes to him with their questions 
and their plans. He puts us all at our best, too, you 
see. He brings out the colors, like a strong light. 
Yes,” he repeated, pleased with the simile he had 
hit upon, — “that is precisely it. Everything comes 
out ; and everything shows up for what it is, when he 
is present. He looks at a thing, and you see it, before 
he speaks, just as he sees it, if you hadn’t noticed it 
was there before. I am so glad he likes you; but I 
knew he would.” 

Allard was just as frank as a boy; he spoke his 
thought without measuring beforehand what it might 
reveal. There was a great deal evident in these words 
of his. I came close enough, then, to be counted 
among the things of home to be judged of in this strong 
light of Grandon ’s presence, and it was a great deal to 
Allard how I might be judged; as if he, in some way, 
were responsible for me. It almost seemed as if some 
significant matter were already sanctioned and settled. 
Certainly it appeared that this was all that Grandon 
Cope could possibly have to do with it or me. As 
Allard’s friend — as the friend and intimate of all — 
he approved, and found reason in me; and for this 
Allard was glad. 

I was glad, also, and proud ; at that moment, to be 
among them so, and to look up with them, claiming in 
part, as they did, his help and companionship, was a 
great and a sufficient thing. I never felt more drawn 
toward Allard, more moved to stretch forth my hands 
to him and have them filled, to rejoice in the good of 
his life and take it into mine, than now. I thought 


RED HILL. 


221 


of the home, of Laura and Kitty, of brotherhood and 
sisterhood like theirs. They had among them all I 
craved ; I was almost ready to seize it as it came to 
me ; I could never dream of coming closer to it than 
this. The heart that has gone hungering and thirsting 
for many things can hardly compare possible satisfyings 
when first it catches a near flavor of great joy. 

I was very glad that Grandon Cope was pleased 
with me. Everything seemed bright and happy. I 
was willing that Allard should quite keep me to him- 
self, and talk on gayly and affectionately. Life looked 
pleasant before me that evening; I hardly feared the 
turnings of the way. It would all come out right; 
there would be guide-boards to follow. 

The great midsummer moon poured her light down 
through the Red Hill woods ; it shifted and shimmered 
through the pine branches, and baptized the old gray 
rocks with beauty. Our way was at once fair and 
dim; we walked in a seclusion and a glory. We heard 
the sweet night sounds of the forest ; the winds and the 
wakeful insects, and the trickle of tireless water; the 
stir and spring of growing, interlacing things. I was 
held and touched with the exquisite pervading charm. 
Allard Cope was at my side, and Grandon walked be- 
hind, looking down upon us two together, kindly and 
well-pleased. In all this I hardly knew where my 
happiness most lay; but I was happy. I began to 
think that I could always be content. 


THE SILENT SIDE. 

She talked of Suffering and of Love, of the ston^ 
in the wall of the New Jerusalem; she could not see 
the colors a human soul was taking at her very side. 
How the Crimson touched it even then; how it was 
entering, perhaps, the baptism of its agony. 


222 


HITHERTO. 


They preach of a great Vicarious Anguish, suffered 
for the world. Do they not know, rather, that it was 
suffered in and with it ; that it was, instead, an Infi- 
nite Participance and Sympathy ; that the anguish was 
in the world, and the Love came down, and tasted, 
and identified itself with it, making of the ultimate 
of pain a sublime, mysterious Rapture? That it is 
far more to feel the upholding touch of One who goes 
down into the deep waters before us, and to receive, 
so, some little drops that we can bear of the great 
Chrism, than to stand apart, safe on the sunny bank, 
while He passeth the flood for us, bridging it safely 
for our uncleansed feet forever ? That — not this — 
was the Pity and the Sacrifice ; that is the Help and 
the Salvation; the Love and the Pain enfold us to- 
gether ; that is what the jasper and the crimson mean ; 
the first refraction where the Divine Light falls into 
our denser medium of being ; the foundation - stone 
of the heavenly building. The beginning of the At- 
one-ment; till, through the thinning angles and the 
tenderer, peacefuller tints, our’ life passes the whole 
prism of its mysterious experience, and beyond the 
far-off violet, at last, it rarefies to receive and to 
transmit the full white light of God. 

What did she know of this, but some faint percep- 
tion of the beauty ? She talked of things in which he 
had not learned; she handled signs that were strange 
to him ; all the while, he was beginning upon the 
things themselves they stood for. 

“ A talk, all of it, — is it ? ” Richard Hathaway 
said to himself, sitting there with his head upon his 
hand, and the sun going down before him, and all the 
air turning red. “I think it is more a doing and a 
bearing. What is it the Bible tells about ‘patterns 
of things’ ? They are patterns of things, maybe, 
and meaning, as she says; but a pattern is a thing 


RED HILL. 


223 


to do by. It isn’t just a picture to look at. Every 
man has got his own wall to build. After some pat- 
tern that we don’t know, as likely as not. We ’re 
working most according to some rule that ’s above our 
work, perhaps, when we think most we ’re having our 
own way, or taking our chance. I don’t expect to 
understand the whole project of it; I can’t make out 
an architect’s plan and specifications, and I don’t know 
as I’m meant to. I’m only a journeyman builder, 
and the stock ’s furnished. I must take it up as it 
comes. I know very well what stone ’s laid upon me 
now to carry.” 

Beyond that, the unspoken wording ceased; there 
was no shape of thinking for what came next. The 
weight was upon him, that was all ; and there was the 
soul-strain as of one who taketh up his cross. Yet 
the burden was transfused all through with the flush 
of his great courage. That turns the dead rock into 
the living preciousness, fit for its setting in the high 
and everlasting places. 

His thought had been as true and grand as hers. 
What if he had only uttered it as it came, if indeed 
it came in time? Grand thoughts do not always ar- 
rive for the parade and the review; it is for the fight 
that they reserve themselves in natures like his. You 
see he was not busy with his thinking, hut his living. 

How he should bear and wait. How he should let 
her prove, and try, and receive, and choose. How he 
should stand always ready and never in the way. 

If all this fell short, after all, of filling, and satis- 
fying, and shaping her life ; if there remained to her, 
by and by, only a friendship, tantalizing, perhaps, in 
the different sphere it reached from to her, and con- 
trasted with her own; if the rest and the home, and 
the certainty were wanting still, — then, perhaps, her 
womanhood might turn to him and to his fireside as 


224 


HITHERTO. 


her childhood had done. Then, perhaps, heart and 
hearth, waiting so long with a great faithfulness, 
might take her blessedly to their glow and peace. 

Out in the west the crimson was softening. The 
beautiful liquid gold was beginning to overflow in the 
far deeps, and to touch the little flecks of clouds till 
they burned like stars. 

Something transfigured itself like that in Richard 
Hathaway’s thought. A far-off rapture lit and shone 
along the horizon. 

“God help me! ” The cry stirred in his soul that 
did not pass his lips. The cry of a great hope and a 
tender longing; his pain had been silent. 

Then had come the hand upon his shoulder, and the 
voice in his ear, — 

“Come, Richard! ” 

And then he had looked up with his face that was 
full. 

How could she guess at what the man was from the 
few, plain, kindly words he uttered? How could she 
translate that fullness and that shining, or make them 
seem in keeping with his homely phrase ? How could 
the gentle, constrained excuse convey the regret, gen- 
erous and tender even to a remorse, that moved him, 
thinking how he had disappointed her and sent her 
away ? Or the love, held hack and panting, that if it 
had spoken itself out might, as she divined, have made 
her tremble? 

How should she know what pain came hack to him 
when she said, — 

“Never mind, Richie. We wonH talk; we ’ll just 
have a good time.” 

That was all he was good for ! She would keep her 
thoughts for people who could answer them. When 
she was in a childish mood, she would come to him to 
have a good time ! That was what her word sounded 
like to him. 


BED HILL. 


225 


The glitter had gone from the cloud-specks. They 
were turning cold and gray. The gold had poured 
itself all out and had been wasted. The moon was 
burnishing her disk brighter and brighter overhead, as 
the sun-rays died. They would have her light to go 
home with, and their day would be done. 

^ Hope came to Richard ; she had nobody else to walk 
with, after Allard Cope and Anstiss moved away. 
And so the party broke itself into its twos and threes, 
and the moonlit woods said this to one and that to 
another as they went down. 


CHAPTER XV. 


OUTSIDE. 

I SAT in the east doorway, looking out into the 
front yard. The northwest wind, coming down from 
the mountains, cool over the housetop, met the morn- 
ing sunshine slanting down through green boughs, and 
made it pleasant. The grass was all over leaf -shad- 
ows and flecks of bright, shifting light. 

A quick little flash of life — the tiniest of striped 
squirrels — played in and out the old stone wall be- 
tween the door-yard and the Long Orchard. The cat 
was chasing the shadows ; springing after them as they 
shifted, crouching herself in the cool grass, leaping 
now and then up a tree- trunk. I sat watching them. 

Just made and meant for them, — all of it ? Doubt- 
less it seemed to them so. Men build stone walls, 
and squirrels come and live in them. What do they 
care for other uses? From the squirrel point there 
are none. 

The great trees have grown these fifty years, or a 
hundred; and the sun shines down through the far 
heaven, and there are beautiful little flickering lights 
and shades in every little forest and garden corner. 
The cat thinks it was all got up for her. It falls in 
with her life and suits it. Her nature answers to it. 
So it was got up for her, or she for it, which is the 
same thing. Every life is a centre, and all things are 
made for it, just as if there were no other. The leaf 
plays for the cat, and the cat for me. 

These thoughts came dreamily through my mind, 
and I half received their significance. 


OUTSIDE. 


227 


How the little chinks are filled up ! ” I said to 
Hope, who came out behind me. “And how much 
room there is for everything; and everything has all 
the room ! ” 

Hope waited, as she always did when I began at the 
end and talked backward. 

“That cat has got the whole world to herself this 
morning. And there ’s an inch-or- two-long brown 
squirrel, that can as much as ever handle a cherry- 
stone, and a wall of great rocks was built half a life- 
time ago for him to come and live in. Miles of wall, 
all over the town, if he likes, — full of safe little 
hiding-holes at every step, — for his travels. Every- 
thing suits so much more than it was made for. 
Everything thinks it is the main thing.” 

“Everything is the main thing, and everything else 
goes round and round it. Every little word takes the 
whole sky to hold it, — after all. Nothing is out- 
side, ” said Hope. 

People don’t say “after all,” unless they have had 
a question or an experience. What had Hope been on 
the outside of? 

“That reminds me,” she said again. “I must go 
over this afternoon to the Polisher girlses.” 

That was the way they spoke in Broadfields, of 
four old-maiden sisters who lived on the outside of 
everything. The “Polisher girls ” they had been called 
for fifty years; and the “Polisher girlses” was the 
rustic possessive when people spoke of their homage 
and belongings. Everybody had come to use it, they 
who knew better and they who did not. 

On the outside of the town, — on the outside of 
their generation, — on the outside verge of life ; out- 
side of love and beauty and the interest and fashion of 
passing and growing things ; outside of expectation for 
anything new, or more, in this world; and yet Hope 


228 


HITHERTO. 


thought of them when she said that everybody was in 
the middle. 

Lodemia, or Lodemy, as the Yankee termination 
made it, braided woolen mats, wove rag carpets, and 
quilted quilts. Mrs. Hathaway had a great coverlet 
of patchwork ready. She and Martha always kept a 
basket full of scraps, and cut them up into geometrical 
shapes, and illustrated science with them in the piecing 
together, in the long summer afternoons and winter 
evenings. 

I said I would go to the Polisher girlses, too. 

Something that happened made me remember the 
day and them as they were that day, to this hour. 

They just touched my life in a chance way; they 
are all buried and gone, now; they had counted more 
than their threescore years, then; but, like the wall 
whose builders were dead, and the trees whose seeds 
sprang into young tenderness longer ago than men can 
remember, something of theirs was meant for me. 
Smallness and -foolishness, — clefts and shadows of old 
patience and slow, strong living; among many things, 
these are also even wrought and grown for those. 

I did not know when or what I was taking; it did 
not seem to me as if the two things by which I remem- 
bered that summer day had to do with each other; 
they stayed side by side in my mind with a seeming 
unfitness and impertinence, even; one meant so much 
to me, and the other so little; I came, by and by, to 
put them together. 

We drove over in the wagon, Hope and I; half an 
hour’s jog around the outskirts of the town; in the 
borders of woods, and along field-roads where there 
were no fences; out on a high edge of table-land, we 
came to it, — a low, old, unpainted house, set on a 
brink, off which you looked in an amaze as to how you 
had gained such height, upon a wide-rolling greenness 


OUTSIDE. 


229 


of hill- swells that were like the waves of a sea, and 
lost themselves in a hazy horizon distance that de- 
ceived you into truly thinking that there an ocean- 
line began. 

Outside of everything it surely was. The road 
stopped here; there were half a dozen other road 
branches, by whose forks we had come, that stopped 
in like manner among these hill pastures, where you 
could see scattered, here and there, white houses and 
grain-fields. They were like islands; the paths to 
them all viewless among the tossing green, as tracks 
across tumultuous waters. Four women, for fifty 
years, in that solitary place; that was the Polisher 
girlses story. 

We went in, and upstairs, where Lodemy was busy 
with her braiding work, finishing a great oval of bright 
colors. 

The whole house was clean to a sweetness that let 
you smell the dry fragrance of its old timbers. 

There were bare, white floors, with dark, worn veins 
and knots that patterned them. The best room had a 
boughten carpet; strips of rag- weaving, and rounds 
and ovals of gay braid were laid down here and there 
by bedsides, and before dressing-tables; there were 
enormous quilts of tiny patchwork, and white spreads 
knit in shells. A dark little middle bedroom opened 
mysteriously off the staircase, and beyond into the 
long, sloping garret odorous with herbs and warm sun- 
shine. 

It was like going back through the half-century 
past, beyond which these girls had been born and 
stopped. Stopped, so that their very girlhood em- 
balmed itself about them; mummied them, all four, 
between eighteen and twenty-five. If there had been 
a gap, — if they had ever gone away, — if anything 
— that the world knew of — had happened to them, 


230 


HITHERTO. 


there would have been a measure for the time ; they 
would not have been the “Polisher girls.” 

But what sort of life had this been, that had just 
stayed on, and waited, and dried up like the old sea- 
soning timbers ? 

What if my life should stop, and be the same for 
fifty years ? 

Life does not stop; it is death then; life goes on, 
though ring after ring of the tree-trunk, and leaf after 
leaf in the springtimes, should be the same. There 
is more and more of it ; and after a while its multi- 
plied sameness is its breadth and glory. 

Did anybody think of this, looking at the Polisher 
girls, wearing their hair turned up behind, with pa- 
thetic unconsciousness, in diminished threads, just as 
it had been in its young fullness ? Little by little it 
had dwindled, and the teeth of the high tortoise-shell 
combs come through. Little by little roundness and 
shape had fallen away, and arms and shoulders grown 
thin and flat ; cheeks hollowed above, and become 
pensile beneath the jaws; noses and chins sharpened; 
white teeth discolored, and crumbled, and vanished; 
old fingers that had done much work, turned withered, 
and knobby-knuckled. Where was the breadth and 
glory that showed but this ? How could their tree of 
life stand in the midst of the garden ? 

Remember and Submit, Lodemy and Frasie, stand- 
ing for Euphrasia, — these were the “Polisher girlses ” 
names. The austerely religious father had chosen the 
two first; his wife’s fancy had been permitted to in- 
dulge itself in the two last. 

Whether it were the influence of her name, and of 
careful admonitions to live up to it, or her being the 
eldest. Remember, from her childhood, had been the 
thought - and - care - taker of the household ; Submit, 
the patient, satisfied receiver of things as they were ; 


OUTSIDE. 231 

Lodemy and Frasie represented the enterprise and im- 
agination of the family. 

“Lodemy is rather changeable; she and Frasie take 
notions about things,” Submit said to us that after- 
noon, apologizing to Hope for the childishness of some 
alteration in the placing of an old easy- chair since she 
had been there. Places were all they could vary; 
things were never substituted or renewed. 

“It makes such a pleasant seat by the window, and 
leaves that nice, square, open corner to stand round in. 
We ’ve each of us a room, now, Frasie and I, on our 
own side of the bed.’^ 

The high posts and the curtains shut them off from 
each other; they were, in fact, two dressing-rooms, 
with a closet opening from each. 

It gave her all the idea of spaciousness that a palace 
could have done, this simple enlarging of a corner; 
and the brightness of the unworn carpet, where the 
chair had been, was like an addition thrown out upon 
the old house. It was quite as if she and Frasie had 
a suite of grand apartments. 

Frasie took us aside downstairs, where a back door 
opened upon a slope of green, when the nice tea was 
over which they would have for us at five o’clock. 

“ ’T is n’t worth while to talk about it before ’Mem- 
ber and Mittie; they don’t enter into it; but Lodemy 
and I we plan it all out together, and it ’s almost as 
good as if we ’d got it. There ’s such a look-out here; 
if we had a stoop built on, a good, broad one, you 
know, with a roof and posts, and vines growing up, 
creepers and morning-glories, or even beans and hops, 
things that grow quick, and some grapes on the end, 
in the sun. I declare we ’ve had it over so much that 
I can see every identical thing, and smell the grapes; 
it ’s quite old in our minds, you see, though we ’ve 
never got the chance to do it. We sit out here when 


HITHERTO. 


232 

it gets shady, and tell on about it till it seems real. 
As true as you live, it ’s so old now that I think it 
a’most needs new shingling! ” 

“Only the vines would get broken! ” reminded Lo- 
demy. 

“They might be careful, I should suppose. People 
do have vines and new shingles.” 

“I think that’s beautiful!” cried Hope, her eyes 
shining. “You can have so many things so! ” 

“Oh, I wouldn’t dare tell you all Frasie’s and my 
nonsense,” said Lodemy, longing to talk of it, and 
warmed to delight by Hope’s sympathy. ' 

“The houses, Demie! ” 

“ Whole houses ? new ones ? ” asked Hope, drawing 
her out. 

“Yes, indeed; Frasie’s and mine. It’s terrible 
silly, but she and I always have talked so, ever since 
we were little. Things might have been, you know; 
and we ’ve wondered about it, and pieced it all out, 
till sometimes it seems almost as if it was. 

“Hers was over there on the hill, and mine among 
the pine-trees in the hollow. Mine ’s a cottage, and 
hers is two-story,” Miss Frasie went on, lapsing into 
the present tense unconsciously. “Mine is straw-color, 
and hers is white; with green blinds, both of ’em. 
They’re all furnished; we’ve made lots of pretty 
things; we used to go about and see; and hear tell; 
and we ’d always come back and plan over for our- 
selves. And then ” — 

“Frasie, you needn’t tell everything! ” 

“I don’t know why, when it might have been. And 
they ’d all have been so good and pretty. We named 
them all. And we know just how they looked and 
behaved, and needed to be managed. I ’m afraid, 
sometimes, it was making graven images; but I did 
fairly come to love them, certain true, I did. I feel 


OUTSIDE. 233 

as if I ’d somehow had ’em and lost ’em, and might 
find ’em again, yet.” 

How simple or silly these old girls had grown, or 
stayed ! 

“You can’t see anything that there isn’t,” broke 
in Hope positively. “Not just so, perhaps; but some- 
how. ” 

That was what she always said ; and her eyes, with 
their strange, golden color, always looked so glad. 

All this kept running in my mind as we drove home 
again, through the shade and the sunset. 

These old, singular women, artless as children, tell- 
ing us their thoughts; these “Polisher girls,” who 
had lived on, not outliving their young dreams ; who 
had been “in the middle,” by “seeing, and hearing 
tell, and planning over for themselves ; ” this word 
of Hope’s, of things that must be — “somehow,” — 
with it all mingled far, faint, beautiful perceptions of 
possible good and joy that all my life had been coming 
to me, as the South sends up sweet breaths into the 
chill and hardness of the North. 

Somewhere and somehow. 

I shrank from everything that was most nearly defi- 
nite in the perad ventures of my life. They were points 
here and there, of things most beautiful that I had 
known or imagined, that started out upon me together, 
in a picture, a vision, without a name. 

I did not stop to ask myself whence they came, 
— all pleasantness of pleasantest days and doings ; 
kindness and trust, such as I had found and rested in 
with the Hathaways; knowledge, and truth, and high 
thought; beauty, and ease, and refinement, as I had 
tasted them with the Copes ; reliance, even upon harsh, 
strong sense and stern right-mindedness, as they were 
with Aunt Hdy, when one could go with them, and 
not, by misdeed or misapprehension, counter; cosy 


234 


HITHEBTO. 


housekeeping and common work even, as Mrs. Hatha- 
way and Martha and Lucretia did it ; a reaching after 
all into which these might crystallize, making a life 
for me, my own and not another’s. A distillation of 
all sweet sense, and hope, and glad accomplishment; 
over all, the awe and beauty and tenderness of a reli- 
gious gratitude and faith. 

Life might be so beautiful; could one, then, think 
and see vividly nothing that was not or that should 
not be? 

Only I remembered the four women who had waited 
fifty years ; with whom there had been time to have 
and to lose, in fancy, a life-full of that which had 
never been given into their hands. 

Richard came out and took the horse, and Mrs. 
Hathaway met us in the keeping-room. 

“ There is news for you, and a note, ” she said to 
me. “Mrs. Cope has been here.” 

She took the note down from the frame of the 
looking-glass. It was directed in Augusta Hare’s 
hand. 

Of all the wonders of modern mysticism, that which 
seems to me least wonderful is the clairvoyant reading 
of sealed letters. I think I never took one of im- 
portance into my hand without a thrill of premonition. 
It is like looking into the face of one who is about to 
speak. The flash comes before the sound. 

I might have laid that letter away, unopened, and 
it would all have come to me. I did not wait for 
Mrs. Hathaway to say another word. A strange dis- 
turbance ran all through me, as if I felt it from 
the ends of my life, out of which something was 
wrenched. 

I knew not why I should hate and dread the news ; 
but I did. I went upstairs and put the note down on 
my table, and took off my bonnet, and sat down on 


OUTSIDE. 235 

the farther side of the room. I waited for it to be 
an old thing, before I took it up and looked at it. 

In ten minutes it was an old thing. I went back 
to it and broke the seal, — a pretty gilt one, of per- 
fumed wax, — and read. 

Augusta Hare was to be married to Grandon Cope. 


CHAPTER XVI. 

♦ THE EAST DOOR AT NIGHT. 

It changed everything. I could not tell why; it 
had no business to; but it did, and I could not bear it. 

It was nothing to me; it never would have been; I 
kept saying this over; yet why did it put me all in a 
whirl to think of? Why did I feel, as it were, all 
those possible fifty years seething and stirring and 
protesting? As if a miserable tangle had got into the 
world just in my little piece of its time-pattern, and 
everything must break and snarl and go to shreds? 
As if an angel had troubled the waters close beside me 
unaware, and another had stepped down before me ? 

A man like this to love a woman, and that woman 
to be Augusta Hare ! 

She to be the “main thing,” as her manner was, 
among the Copes, and in the life of South Side! 
Everything else to go round and round her! Some- 
thing was possible for somebody, that I had never even 
thought of, and she had got it. I could not tell what 
it was in me, — envy, hatred, malice, all uncharita- 
bleness, — but something roused up in me, and raged. 
I could not have it so. It loas not the right thing, 
and should not have been. Something ought to have 
interfered. 

A man like this to love a woman — so ! That he 
should love all great, true things; that he should 
search for God, and find Him in his works; that he 
should lead others up to these high loves and this holy 
reverence, — this was fit, and beautiful and blessed for 
all who came near, and whom he cared for, — kindly 


THE EAST BOOB — AT NIGHT. 


237 


and a little. I would have been so glad to be but one 
of these. But that he should care thus, — that a 
blessedness like this should come down about a wo- 
man’s heart and life, — so near me; that I should 
have this glimpse into what might be for one, no bet- 
ter than I, and never for me, — it tossed me in a pain 
and unrest and rebellion that I could neither compre- 
hend nor control. 

She put it on a little bit of paper, in a few common 
words, as if it had been information of a pleasure 
party. She sealed it up, deliberately and daintily, 
with scented wax, and sent it to me. It was a thing 
to thrill and flash from heart and eyes; to fill and 
overflow a whole being, and to touch others like a tide 
from heaven; to be told as spirits tell things, and in 
no poor human words. If it had been like this, — if 
she had been like him, — I could have been glad. I 
should not have been reminded of myself, or had my- 
self revealed to me. I could have folded my hands 
and stood happy and humble, near them. If they had 
called me friend, — sister, — I could have walked with 
them in Paradise. 

But I knew that I knew him better than she. I 
knew that I — How close it had come, and how it 
had passed me by, this that I should never have 
thought of! 

I had not loved; but I had found out that I could 
have loved. There was light — blinding light — on 
the whole long enigma of life. 

This was all that was to he for me, out of the fifty, 
or sixty, or seventy years. 

My life was one of the flawed and spoiled lives ; and 
I had to live it out. 

There are thousands of these lives ; they have to be, 
to make up the world ; but when one first finds out 
that one’s own is to be among them, it is as if the 


238 


HITHERTO. 


world had been made in vain. All the years rise up 
and resist. 

Take what was left and make the best of it ? I had 
been almost ready to marry Allard Cope. I knew now 
that I never could. Him, last of all. He must 
never ask me. 

I might turn to something tender and pitiful; a 
mother’s love might have comforted me; but I could 
not take up with a lesser and different joy ; at the very 
side, too, of that other. 

I looked thus deep into myself, by that blinding 
light, and found out this much certainly, that I could 
not arrive at before. 

There is always something to be done next; there is 
always something waiting; a soul cannot go off into 
the deep with its trouble and hide there, and lie pas- 
sive and crushed, forgetting life and flinging it behind, 
as it would like to do ; the body sits within four walls 
of a room in somebody’s house; and the next thing is 
to go downstairs again; and pretty soon it will be 
dinner, or tea, or breakfast time. 

“Took to her bed.” They say this of one who flings 
down the body; it is all one can do; there is only the 
bed, or the grave. I could not take to my bed for 
nothing that anybody knew of ; so I must go down- 
stairs ; I must say something to somebody about this 
news that I had got. I would rather say it in the 
dark, than go to bed, and have to get up and say it in 
the morning. 

I went out and stood at the stair-head. I wondered 
where they all were, and whom I should meet first. I 
would rather it should have been Richard. The old, 
trusting feeling came over me of how sorry he would 
be to have me sorry. 

I heard Martha singing and washing up the tea- 
things. Suddenly, there came a clattering crash, and 


THE EAST DOOM — AT NIGHT. 


239 


a silence. Something — a good many things, one 
would think — fallen and broken. A thing that 
hardly ever happened, out of Martha’s hands. It 
seemed as if it happened now, on purpose for me. At 
this moment I can believe it did. Ah, if we could 
perceive what care is over us, tenderly, in small things, 
smoothing them for our great needs, we should feel, in 
the midst of them, the comfort of a Hand that is like 
a mother’s ! 

Everybody would be there in a minute. When 
things break, everybody always is. 

I heard Mrs. Hathaway start up. 

“Why, Martha, do tell! What are yon trying to 
do ? ” she called out, in a gentle, kindly astonish- 
ment. 

“Well — I haven’t made out much, after all,” an- 
swered Martha, in a stooping voice, quite cool and 
ironical, as her way was. “I’ve only broken — a 
tumbler and — two plates, and — nicked — the teapot- 
lid. If I ’d had presence of mind, and let go of the 
pot, I should have just done it.” 

Hope and Mrs. Hathaway laughed, and I ran down- 
stairs. 

I went out to the east door, where I had sat in the 
morning. Richard came up to me from the gate 
where he had been standing. 

Nobody had begun to wonder yet about me. All 
my life had contracted itself, with a spasm of pain, 
toward a point, and I had felt into the years, and yet 
I had only been away minutes. 

I was in a hurry to speak then, in the shadow, 
since I must. 

“I suppose you have heard the news, Richard? ” 

“About Miss Hare. Yes, do you like it? ” 

“No.” 

To this he answered nothing. 


240 


HITHERTO. 


“I don’t like it, Richard, and I don’t want to talk 
about it. It spoils South Side.” 

He would take care of it, now, for me. I should 
not have to talk about it much. 

“I ’m sorry for that,” said Richard. “South Side 
is a good deal to you.” 

I wondered how much he meant by that. I won- 
dered if it had seemed likely to him that it would 
come to be any more to me than it had been. If peo- 
ple had thought that, it must be stopped. I could 
not stop it now, too soon. 

“It will be all Augusta, now. Everything is, where 
she is. I don’t think I could have her giving it out 
to me in little bits. But that is n’t it, entirely. I 
can’t bear things that don’t fit, and that oughtn’t to 
be. It makes me ache, as Martha says ; as if I knew 
better, and ought to have helped it.” 

“Miss Hare and you were friends, though.” 

“Yes. I like Miss Hare. There is a very good 
sort of liking that just belongs to her. But I don’t 
worship her now, as I did once. And there isn’t 
enough of her to be” — I could not say “Mrs. 
Grandon Cope.” 

“We won’t talk about it, if you please, Richard. 
It hurts me. South Side is pretty much over for me ; 
that is all.” 

I must have talked on, somehow, until I could say 
something like this. Now it was done, I could not 
bear another word. I only told Richard that I was 
tired, and had a headache, and believed I would go to 
bed. 

I went round and said good-night to Mrs. Hatha- 
way and Hope, and left Richard to tell them, if he 
chose, what I had said to him. 


THE EAST BOOIt — AT NIGHT. 


241 


THE SILENT SIDE. 

“‘Pretty much over? ’ 

“ Did she really mean that ? 

“Only a pleasant place for her that a thing like 
this can spoil? 

“She can’t care for him, then. Poor fellow! ” 

Richard Hathaway’s big heart really had this in it 
for Allard Cope, and it came first. Then, a great 
throb of joy, that could not help itself, surged up. 

“If I might try now, after all. She ’ll have so 
little left. If I could only give her what she wants ! 

“Why can’t there be enough of me, when I would 
give it all? 

“There would be enough, at last, if she could wait. 
It ’s the pouring of the river that makes the sea. It 
was giving away the little that was all, that fed five 
thousand men. 

“Five loaves and two fishes. 

“I wonder what put that into my head. 

“Couldn’t the Lord bless love as well as bread? 
Couldn’t He make more of me, for her? If He bids 
me give, what else is it for? 

“ God be good to me ! Make up the lack ” — 

He did not know he said it. The word went 
straight up out of his soul, without lip-shaping. He 
brought what he had and laid it at God’s feet. There 
it was grand and beautiful, touched with the light of 
his countenance. A gift of all heaven for any wo- 
man. 

But just because it was a thing out of the pure soul- 
depths, — no moulding of brain or trick of speech, — 
it was grand only between himself and God. He 
could not take it in his hands or on his lips to Anstiss 
Dolheare. He could only say some plain, poor, fal- 
tering words. What should she know by them? 


242 


HITHERTO. 


He could ask her to come and live at the farm. 
He could ask her to be his wife. 

Suppose, even, she should come ? Suppose he might 
have her, all his life long, at his side? All his life 
long he might not show her this unspoken beauty of 
his love that was in him. Why are souls set so close, 
and yet so far? Why must they always be asking 
after a sign, and no adequate sign he given? Was 
that what it meant, partly? The sign of the prophet 
Jonah? Must this heart of man go down into the 
heart of the earth to be shown forth clearly only at its 
rising again? 

“God make it up to me and to her! God tell her 
what I cannot ” — 

All this was in him, — this perception and question 
and prayer, without words. A Spirit moved with his 
spirit, he knew not whence, nor whither. By his great 
love, his weakness and littleness touched the Everlast- 
ing Strength and Fullness. So should the river flow 
till it should make a sea where a dry place was. So, 
if she could believe and wait, there should be enough 
for her. If only she could perceive the gift, and what 
it was that came to her, and cease to hanker after the 
signs. 

Richard Hathaway thought he could say something 
to Hope about it. 

He did not know that if there is a woman-friend to 
whom a man can speak of his love for another woman, 
she may be too close to hear it without a pain. But 
if any woman could stand close to a man in tender 
friendship and hear this, it was Hope Devine. 

She came out into the little porch after a while, for 
the -coolness. They were apt to sit there under the 
trees these summer nights. 

There were bright stars in the sky, and the long 
twilight had not all faded away. 


THE EAST DOOR — AT NIGHT. 243 

He asked her if she would walk up the Long Or- 
chard, to the brook-pasture wall. 

Mrs. Hathaway sat knitting in the dark, within. 
She caught up a new, invisible thread, as she heard 
them move away together, and knitted that also. 
Also in the dark. 

She had come to love Hope Devine as a daughter. 
She could see where there might be a rest for her boy. 
Pretty Lucy Kilham had gone long ago, and that had 
never been anything but a picture in the half-light of 
a mother’s heart. Anstiss Dolheare’s restless nature 
gave her a pain for her. Now and then, Richard’s 
watchfulness over it gave her a dread for him. She 
looked at them often as she had looked at them long 
ago, when they talked about the jasper. The way for 
them both, still, she thought, was all through Mat- 
thew, Mark, Luke, and John, before the Revelation 
should be light about them. 

Hope Devine she believed to he one of those with 
whom God’s grace began in infancy. She took re- 
ligion as she took all things else, into her clear, re- 
joicing nature, where it needed not to be born with a 
pang. She simply did with a gladness that which she 
was allowed and admonished to do. She could not 
long for what there was not for her. She could not 
shut her eyes, and see, as she had said in her child- 
hood, aught but what was truly there. Her prayers 
laid hold of the kingdom of heaven, as her imagina- 
tion of its dreams. She did not doubt, or fear, or 
strive. She stood in the sunshine, and it illumined 
her through. 

Is this a likening of the kingdom of heaven to a 
vision ? 

What is a vision, but a seeing? We call things 
dreams that we may dare be unbelieving of them. 
We shut our eyes and pray, and perhaps do scarcely 


244 


HITHERTO. 


better. God holdetb him not guiltless who taketh his 
name in vain. The soul must know that her Re- 
deemer liveth. 

Mrs. Hathaway would have been glad if Richard 
and this girl could love each other. So she sat in the 
dark, and knitted on, while the two went up the or- 
chard together. 

He began by telling her what Anstiss had said. 

“She does not like it. It spoils her pleasure with 
the Copes.” 

After a pause, again, — “I did not think that that 
could have been. I thought — there might have been 
news of her and them — some time.” 

“ Of Allard Cope and her, you mean ? ” 

“Yes.” 

“I thought she would find out that it could not do.” 

“Hope! I must tell you. I was afraid of it. 
But I waited to see how it would be. Do you think 
I ought to wait any longer? Do you think there 
would be any use ? ” 

See how he faltered with lip-language. See how 
little he could tell any human ear of what his heart 
told Heaven. How little he could paint of the crim- 
son and the blue, — the suffering and the truth, — 
into which he had gone up, and stood steadfast. 

This was his whole story of it; of the red sunset 
that faded into the gray; of the ripe clover-blooms 
that had had their June. 

This was all he had to show for it ; for the waiting 
that had been as years; because it counted the years 
that were coming, and had been ready to lengthen it- 
self into them, silently, for her sake. And for the 
great, warm rapture of a returning hope, he had only 
the faint asking, — “ Did she think it would be of any 
use ? ” 

How was such a man as this to woo the woman he 


THE EAST DOOR -AT NIGHT. 245 

would have, — would give himself to, rather? How 
should she ever know? 

But Hope Devine knew. Because she could shut 
her eyes and see. 

Literally, it was her way when she wanted to see 
clear, to put her hand up over her eyes, and shut 
them, and “think hard; ” then “it came,” as the rest 
of the story-book that had not been printed, but in 
which she could read things beyond the “Finis.” 

Under the trees, here, in the dusk, she stopped 
short, and put her fingers up against her brows, and 
bent her head, and held her eyelids close. Richard 
stopped beside her, and waited; hushing himself and 
holding himself motionless after that last word of his, 
as one does when one has disclosed a heart-secret; as 
if the whole air were full of that which had gone forth, 
and a fresh vibration might flash into light Heaven 
knows how much more. 

He understood her fashion, also, and that she would 
speak presently. He listened for her word with a 
tingling in every fibre. 

“Not quite yet. Wait a little more. For her 
mind to settle itself down, and things to get where 
they belong. If you should speak like that now, you 
would only stir it all up again. She is just finding 
out.” 

That was precisely like Hope. Precisely her way, 
plain and practical, yet keen and far-seeing. Seeing 
more than she could define, but grasping clearly the 
nearest point. “Put your foot there,” she said to 
herself or to another, in a maze. 

No flutter and bewilderment of personal conscious- 
ness, at the kind of trust reposed in her, and of all 
that it suggested, far and wide. No stopping, even, to 
look at herself, and see how this thing concerned it- 
self with, or seemed to, her. All that was behind; 


246 


HITHERTO. 


she might come back to it; but the first impulse was 
outgoing. 

It calmed Richard, and put him at his ease. The 
electric air was stilled to an equilibrium, without a 
shock. A generous sympathy had taken in all that 
had so expanded itself, almost to a pain, between 
them, and absorbed it to a single thought that lay in 
her mind no stranger than in his ; a thing true, and of 
course; to be kept sacred, also. There was always 
this rest with Hope. 

“I am glad you know; it has been all my life; all 
my life that could have that in it, I mean. It must 
have something to do with hers.” 

He could say more, now; he could almost let that 
silent heart of his speak out. 

“ I am glad, too, ” Hope said, with the voice of a 
spirit of cheer. “I can’t quite see how it will all 
be, but I can, almost. There are beautiful things 
out in the years, Richard. Some of them are always 
for everybody. And everybody is amongst them, any 
way.” 

“Hope! you help me more than any one.” 

Richard took Hope’s hand and held it fast. 

They stood at the very top of the orchard, now, 
where the broad wall of rocks stopped them, over 
which they looked down the steep, green pasture-side 
at whose foot the brook blundered along, plashing up 
sweet breaths into the night air, and breaking with a 
song, sung over and over, a little way into the great 
silence that reached up to the stars. 

“ I would like to help you ” — And Hope ended 
there, and did not say the final word that had been 
coming. 

Why could she not say “ always ” ? Why did the 
word, unspoken, stand, as it were, and point with its 
finger, suddenly, down those years where the beautiful 


THE EAST DOOR -AT NIGHT. 247 

things were, and shut them off with the shadow of its 
pointing ? 

She did not wait to see. Hope could shut her eyes 
and have visions. She could open them widely, also, 
upon present things, and refuse, with an instinct, to 
see more. 

She turned round, and faced homewards; drawing 
her hand, by the motion, away from Richard’s. 

“It does have to do with hers,” she said, going back 
and answering what he had said before. “She can’t 
go quite away from it. It is in her life, clear back, 
and far on. And by and by, when she comes to know 
what it is, it will be like the lighting of a lamp, Rich- 
ard; done all in a minute, and shining through all the 
room. ” 

Hope spoke in her peculiar, quick way; the words 
hastening themselves with the instantaneous urging of 
her thought ; her perception was so glad, so beautiful ; 
there was such joy in perception. To seize sight of 
things truly, and of how their perfect and unerring re- 
lations lay; to discern from afar off the must be, and 
how this was the evolution of a harmony that whis- 
pered itself from the beginning, — what if there were 
nothing of it all immediately for her, or of her con- 
cern ? 

She could think of it all more purely, more gladly, 
without that touch of a hand; without any reminder 
of herself; she did not try to guess wherefore; she 
kept her soul straight forward, and singly intent, and 
her act followed. 

Mrs. Hathaway sat silent awhile after Hope came 
in and her son had gone upstairs. And then she put 
a sudden, plain question : — 

“What has Richard been saying to you, Hope? ” 

Hope answered as directly. 

“Something about thoughts of his, ma’am; which 


248 


HITHERTO. 


I could not tell again, you know. Not but what he ’d 
tell you, — or has, perhaps. ” 

“I’m willing he should tell you his thoughts, child. 
Only take care how you answer them. I just wanted 
to let you know I was willing; that was all. 1 should 
be well satisfied if you both had something you could 
tell me. I didn’t know but it might be coming, now; 
and old folks are impatient. When the candle ’s burnt, 
low, you hurry to finish the chapter. If it was to be 
God’s will, Hope, it would be my mind, that you should 
have your home here always.” 

When she had spoken it out thus, quite plainly, Mrs. 
Hathaway leaned herself back again composedly in her 
chair, rocking gently to and fro, and her knitting- 
needles made their clean, quick sound against each 
other. Otherwise there was a perfect stillness in the 
dusky room. 

Hope could not help the picture, now, that showed 
itself to her in a sudden flash. There in the dark, 
just as if she had shut her eyes and called it up of her 
own accord. 

A picture of sunniness and full content — for some 
one ; of a strong, true, manly tenderness ; of a wide, 
cheery house ; brimful of busy pleasantness and loving 
cares ; of a man and woman leaving their young days 
behind, and living on into ripe, happy years; of a 
story beginning over again that had begun over and 
over here, before; of little children growing up; of 
the old, bright “mother’s room,” out of which mother- 
hood should not die away ; of the big work-basket and 
the Bible, used right on, by somebody, into another 
old age; of hands-full and heart-full, just the same 
only passed on, — household “ keys of the kingdom of 
heaven ” through womanly apostleship ; — these were 
“the beautiful things out in the years; ” and suddenly 
Hope saw them plainly through Mrs. Hathaway’s plain 


THE EAST DOOR -AT NIGHT. 249 

words, — “It would be my mind that you should have 
your home here, always.” 

“Always.” That had been the word she could not 
speak. 

“More help to him than any one, — always.” Why 
was it put so distinctly before her, as something that 
might be ? When she knew so well what already was. 

For a moment, between sure vision and clear hon- 
esty, she was bewildered. 

And then her faith came back. “You can’t see 
anything that there isn’t, — somehmv,^’ repeated itself 
to her. “Not just so, but somehow. 

“Mrs. Hathaway — dear ma’am,” she began again, 
coming round and standing in the dark, close by the 
old lady’s shoulder, “there was nothing like that in 
the thoughts he told me. It was nothing about that. 
Don’t think about it again, please, so. I think I 
shall always be just among things. Helping a little, 
perhaps. I think people can be gladdest, sometimes, 
of things that are just a little way off.” 

Only a glimpse had come to Hope Devine, — a 
glimpse of joy that might have been given; a side- 
glance at a suffering that she might have taken home 
to herself. 

Self-love is a burning-glass that makes a focus in 
the heart. One can wait for God without an ache; 
looking o?^, not inward. Hope never stopjDed to look 
at herself till she fixed a pain. She said it was be- 
cause she could not bear pain. She turned away from 
it because she must be glad. Wretchedness would kill 
her. 

The next morning, when the breakfast work was 
done, she went up the orchard, alone, to get green 
apples, while Mrs. Hathaway was making fly-away 
crust for a beautiful great pie. 

Up the Long Orchard was a walk to do any one 


250 


HITHEBTO, 


good, by daylight or evening light. Now, the sun was 
warm among the fruit, that began to look red and 
smell spicy on some early- bearing trees. Warm, here 
and there, upon the short, white clover that sprinkled 
the close turf ; while the green branches, reaching from 
side to side, made pleasant arcades, in whose groins 
the rare little humming-birds had come and built their 
tiny velvet nests and flew murmuring about their young. 
These long arcades of horizontal spreading apple-boughs 
stretched up over the slope, aisle beside aisle, across 
two acres’ width; there were three acres’ measurement 
from the roadside to the top wall; it was a noble 
planting. The turf was soft and crisp under the feet ; 
the bees and the humming-birds made a continuous 
happy thrill upon the air; the air itself was tenderly 
sweet. 

Hope, living always “ in the middle of her pasture, ” 
felt the delight of it in the full present moment, as she 
walked slowly on. But up at that top wall, built 
square and flat with double and treble stones, and the 
filling in of every stray pebble that had been gathered 
carefully out of the mellow orchard soil, she stopped, 
sat down, and thoughts came to her. Partly out of 
the pleasantness ; partly answering themselves to ques- 
tions that moved in the deeper life underlying and 
outreaching the present, even in her blithely calm 
nature. 

She had had a glimpse. She, as well as Anstiss 
Dolbeare. Something just shown her and withdrawn. 
Withdrawn from her own hands, — the beauty and the 
joy of it not hidden from eyes that look beyond the 
hand-reach. 

She had thought too little of self, always, for any- 
thing to have grown up in her that could turn, now, 
to an instant misery. She had seen, for a moment, a 
thing that might have been. Only it was not; and 


THE EAST DOOR — AT NIGHT. 


251 


that was enough for her. That which was not given 
was as if it were out of the world, for her; except 
that nothing was out of her world, or wholly refused 
her, into which she could enter with that wide spirit- 
apprehension which is the genius for living all life. 
It is the meekness to which nothing is denied; which 
blessedly inherits the earth. 

Not that this nature of hers was cold, inert, incapa- 
ble of fire or passion ; it would only never burn in upon 
itself; it was that divinely touched temperament, to 
which all fullness is possible, but which can wait, find- 
ing such fullness in the daily Will and gift ; feeling 
the wealth also, out of which the daily gift comes; 
feeding upon grains that drop from an exhaustless 
storehouse. 

Up there, where she could see out over the Nine 
Hills, as they were called, among which wound the 
busy brook that was almost a little river of itself be- 
fore it poured into the real great river, and amid whose 
curves slept the beautiful double Spectacle Pond, she 
talked with herself, admonishingly, in a sort; as if 
she knew things that self might long for, and that 
should be met with a reason and a satisfying before- 
hand. Because she could not chafe and discontent 
herself. Because it was the very law of her life to 
find a cheer, and a sufliciency at once, before she got 
restless. 

“It ’s enough to be close to things, ” she said. “It ’s 
only really to concern yourself with them. You 
haven’t time to live ’em all, and every one, for your- 
self. 'to know all about anything is to have it, — the 
good of it. I think it ’s easy for the angels to be 
happy so. They know, you see. It ’s easiest of all, 
for God. 

“Perhaps He shows us things, sometimes, and puts 
them away again for us, to give us by and by, when we 


252 


HITHERTO. 


are bigger; as mothers do with children’s playthings 
that are too beautiful for them to have right off. 

“If all the sunshine was poured on us, we should 
he blinded and burned. But we can see it on every 
little spear of grass, and in the water-sparkles, and on 
the hills, and the white clouds. That is the way we 
get it all. 

“I’m glad — yes, I’m glad — I’m amongst it. 
And I have got enough; or else, of course, I should 
have more. Something will he coming by and by. 
You can’t have more than both hands full at once, 
Hope Devine! And both hands are full.” 

Coming down slowly, beneath the shade, picking up 
fair, smooth, delicate green apples into her basket for 
the pie, she came upon Richard, standing under the 
tree on whose lower outmost bit of twig, in a crotch 
like a child’s thumb and finger, one of the humming- 
birds had built. Some inconceivably tiny life must 
be nestling there in the little soft, lichen-covered ball, 
that one could hardly find, even at the second looking; 
for about it, in and out among the leaves, darting in 
swift, half-viewless lines and sweeps, fluttered a mor- 
sel of motherhood that dropped itself suddenly, you 
could not have seen when or how, into its cunning 
home; only the wee head and the thread-like bill, 
straight and delicate like a penciling upon the air, 
showing themselves as it turned, alert and vigilant, 
poising itself again for flight, after it had done, good- 
ness knows what, in a flash of time, in the way of 
breakfast or early lunch. 

Richard was looking up at it, watching it as he did 
all small and tender things. A great strong man, 
with a heart in his bosom full of its own longings and 
questions and pains, with room in it none the less for 
what made that look on his face of gentle interest in 
this least bit of love and life, almost, that could be 


THE EAST BOOB -AT NIGHT. 


253 


visible together. There was a smile on his lips and in 
his eyes, and he stood motionless lest the atom should 
be scared. He had watched it so, day by day, ever 
since it came there. He would not have had it dis- 
turbed or hurt for the whole value of his orchard. 

He stopped here on his way across to a part of his 
farm beyond the brook pasture where the meadow-hay 
was being made. He had been off among his haymak- 
ers early, before, and they had breakfasted at home 
without him. He and Hope had not seen each other 
since they walked and talked together here last night. 
There was a deeper color for a minute in the fresh red- 
brown of his cheek as she came near. 

“Good-morning, Hope. It’s a good day for the 
hay,” he said. 

“It ’s a good day for everything,” said Hope 
brightly. “It ’s a day to be real sure and happy in, 
I think.” 

“It seems like a day for everything to go right in, 
does n’t it? ” 

“Everything will go right, Richard, to-day, or 
some day.” 

“Hope! ” cried Richard impulsively, “you are my 
dear little friend 1 ” 

He could as well be shy with a sunbeam as with 
Hope. Her words and her look were like a radiant 
warmth to him, that drew him out. 

“I am so glad to be that, Richard. Thank you! ” 

He met her clear, golden eyes for an instant, as she 
said this, her face turned frankly to his. There was 
joy and truth in them ; honesty and a tender peace. 

His tall head bent down kindly toward her. 

“I shall never,” he said, “have anything” — 

“ Much better than such friendliness as yours, ” was 
the meaning of what was coming. It was the feeling 
in him, and the feeling trembled in his words. 


254 


HITHERTO. 


When a man and woman get so far as this, it might 
be very easy for them to get farther. Things might 
be so that this gentle friendliness, so felt and owned, 
should come back to fill a possible chill and depriva- 
tion. Many a woman, standing betw'een two as Hope 
stood, w'ould have been not unmindful or even im- 
provident of this. 

But the man of slow speech faltered again over his 
thought. Honest Hope stopped him before he gave 
her that which she might have waited for and taken. 

“You will have it she said. “I can feel it 

coming for you. I am certain how it will be. Cer- 
tain. ” 

She said it to herself as much as to him. Keeping 
something down so, that never should come up. Turn- 
ing her back upon something that she would not so 
much as look at. 

“I won’t — I won’t — I won’t — I won’t — I 
won’t! ” pulsed itself in her resisting thought, as she 
ran, presently, down toward the house with her apples 
for which Mrs. Hathaway would be waiting. 

“I w'on’t — I won’t — I won’t I ” it went on under- 
neath, while she talked busily as soon as she got in, 
and flew about for knife and dish, and hurried to pare 
and slice, and asked questions, and set Martha chatter- 
ing, and would not by any means, for half an hour 
after that, let a silence or a thoughtfulness return upon 
her. 

It went out of her so, whatever it was that might 
have tempted her. She never knew its form or face 
or prompting. Only its shadow had cast itself before 
its coming, and she had outrun it. Souls are kept so, 
in a celestial ignorance, that will not know. 

This was the girl who, six years before, had run 
with all her childish might away from a pleasure she 
yWas not sure that she might take. 


CHAPTER XVII. 

TELLING AUNT ILDY. 

“I WOULD tell Aunt Hdy, ” Hope said to me. 

Tell Aunt Ildy ! 

But the more I thought of it, the more it seemed 
the only thing and the best. 

She would blame me ; but I could not hear my own 
blame any longer. I could almost solicit harshness as 
a relief ; as one presses and grinds an aching tooth. I 
was to be disposed of, too; I was verily in sore per- 
plexity where to put myself. I could not stay any 
longer at the farm; I could not go home, and let 
things be just as they had been. Nobody could help 
me much, unless it were Aunt Ildy. 

She was coming out that very afternoon to tea. 

It had been a hard week with me since I had heard 
that news. Troubles had come thickly. Everything 
hurried to a crisis. 

Allard Cope came over the very next day, and 
wanted to drive me in to South Side, to take tea and 
see Augusta. 

It was well, in one way, that there was more than 
one distastefulness in this. I could let a part of my 
unwillingness be seen. 

“What shall I do? ” I cried, in a whisper, to Mrs. 
Hathaway, catching her at the keeping-room door, on 
my way back to the parlor where Allard was. “I 
don’t want to go ; with him — so. ” 

“My dear, if you do go,” said Mrs. Hathaway, 
with placid deliberation, looking at me over her spec- 
tacles in her gentle, discerning way, “you must be 


256 


HITHERTO. 


ready for any questions that he may choose to ask 
you.” 

“Oh, Mrs. Hathaway!” I gasped, in my despair, 
while I trembled suddenly, and a hot shame poured its 
crimson up till my eyes brimmed with the pain of it. 
I shut the door behind us, then; for, after that, there 
must be more said. 

“Don’t say so, — please! ” 

“I don’t say it, Anstiss. It says itself. Haven’t 
you known what you wanted to do about this ? ” 

“There hasn’t been anything that I could helj). I 
could n’t tell. You see I ’ve known them always, and 
they ’ve all been kind. There and here, Mrs. Hatha- 
way, have been my pleasant places. All I ’ve had. 
But I do7iH want — Oh, Mrs. Hathaway, what shall 
I do ? ” It came back to the first beseeching ques- 
tion. 

“ Did he ever take you to ride ? ” 

“No. There was never anything that I could help; 
only little things, like all the rest.” 

“This is different, then. You must stop here.” 

“ But what can I say to him ? All my life to let 
him be such a friend, and then, all at once — Oh 
dear! It ’s hardest for us, is n’t it, Mrs. Hathaway? ” 

“ It would have to be a worse ‘ all at once, ’ you see, 
dear. Yes; it is pretty hard for us. But ‘right ’ is 
‘can,’ always.” 

“ ‘Wrong ’ is ‘can’t.’ That ’s as far as I can get. 
The other part is dreadful.” 

“You ought to go, now, Anstiss, dear; the promise 
is for everything: ‘It shall be given you in that same 
hour what you shall say, and how you shall speak. ’ 
Only look straight at the right, and believe in the 
Help.” 

1 held up my face toward her, — very pitifully it 
must have been, for there were tears in her eyes as 


TELLING AUNT ILDY. 257 

she kissed me. And then I had to open the door, and 
walk across the hall to Allard Cope. 

There was such an awful difference between the Al- 
lard of to-day and the Allard that I had just liked to 
be with in all our bright, pleasant, common ways, be- 
fore. A thought in a man’s heart like that which I 
could no longer igjpore in Allard Cope’s for me, makes 
his presence terrible. Terrible, even though one is 
glad, until the thought is spoken, and there can no 
longer be a separate presence or a separate thought. 

“I am very sorry I have had to leave you waiting. 
But I don’t think I can go back to South Side with 
you. I don’t feel well to-day, indeed.” 

There was more than that in my face, though my 
face must have confirmed my words. I saw the trouble 
that was there reflected in Allard’s. A trouble and a 
chill came into his. 

After all, a word, even altogether aside from the 
point, can do it. I was to blame. I might have done 
it before, more kindly. I ought to have known my 
own mind. They were right about it. Aunt Ildy 
was right. I had no business to wait, and say. How 
can I tell what may be ? I should have let what was 
be seen. If I had looked straight at the right from 
the beginning, and believed in the Help, this — so bad 
as this — would not have been. I stood like a culprit 
before Allard Cope. 

“I am sorry,” he said. “My mother and Augusta 
will be sorry.” 

“Indeed, indeed, I am sorry, too.” The words 
came from a deep place in my heart, and my lips 
trembled, do what I would, as I spoke them. I felt 
myself pale and sad as I looked at Allard, and held 
out my hand. “You are all so kind to me; too kind; 
I never was worth it.” 

He knew that I was repentant for more than my 


258 


HITHERTO. 


refusal of his kindness of to-day. One needs only he 
true. The truth comes out, caring nothing for words. 
Any or none, it is all the same. He knew at that 
moment that he might not “ask me any question that 
he chose.” At any rate, not now. A man goes away 
and thinks over things like these, and reasons them 
into such shape as he will, according to his tempera- 
ment and the strength of his purpose. It might not 
he all done with, yet, by any means. But, for just 
now, it was averted. 

With a few more sentences of regret and courtesy 
on his part, he was gone, presently. I had sent him 
away ; I had begun the hard work that I must do, and 
the pain of my punishment was in my heart. 

The next day after, Augusta came herself. Gran- 

don had been obliged to go down to H , and she 

had taken the carriage and come out. 

I kissed her, and gave her my good wishes, of course, 
as well as I could. And she put herself in the high 
light of a very pretty picture for me, and told me, 
graciously, many things out of her romance. And 
then she urged me about coming to South Side, and 
pressed me close as to my refusal of the day before. 

“It won’t quite do,” she said. “There are times, 
even, when a woman can’t have a headache. You ’ll 
lose everything, Anstiss, ” she ended, at last, plainly, 
“if you don’t take care.” 

Then I broke out passionately : — 

“I hope there isn’t — I wish to Heaven, Augusta, 
there werenH — anything to lose! ” 

She just sat, petrified. 

Now, at any rate, she knew what I meant. 

“At this last minute, Anstiss, — you wo7i*t have 
Allard Cope ? ” 

“Oh, don’t!” I cried, as if my body had been 
wounded. “What right has everybody to put it so? 


TELLING AUNT ILDY. 259 

He never asked me ; he never said a word like that ; 
he never shall.” 

“Then,” said Augusta, getting up with a quiet, 
distant displeasure, “you have been exceedingly wrong 
— for years.” 

She was one of the family, now. She was going 
to be Mrs. Grandon Cope. She was going to be Al- 
lard’s sister. 

They would all think like that. They had come 
out of their way to be so very good to me, — they had 
meant me a life-long good, — and this was what I had 
done. 

She went away, and left me very unhappy. But I 
could cry, and let my eyes be red. They knew what 
I had to worry me. Neither they nor I myself need 
look further than that. I could fling myself on the 
bed, and be miserable to my heart’s content. 

Mrs. Hathaway came up from her dairy- work, 
which was just done, with the perfume of it around 
her. She had been working up rolls of fresh, sweet 
butter, and she had had her little dairy-lunch, — a 
glass of rich, yellow buttermilk. She brought one up 
to me, and, seeing how I was, set it down on the table, 
and came over to my side. Her breath was like the 
clover breath of kine, and her soft, housewifely, mo- 
therly hands were fragrant from their delicate employ, 
as she stooped over and laid her fingers on my flushed 
forehead, smoothing away the hair. 

“Augusta is so safe, and satisfied, and hard,” I 
said, out of my sobs, and my pillow, and my crum- 
pled pocket-handkerchief. “It ’s so easy for her to 
blame. She ought to blame herself, too; it has been 
half her doing.” 

“We ought all to think of the beam, dear. It 
might account for a good many of the motes.” 

“I do think of the beam. I ’ve been selfish, and 


260 


HITHERTO. 


foolish, and hateful. I can never get over it. I ’ve 
lost half the good of my life, and spoiled other peo- 
ple’s good. And there ’s nothing left.” 

“That’s never true,” said Mrs. Hathaway, “and 
we haven’t any right to say it. That’s the biggest 
beam of all, because it ’s unbelief. All the rest of 
your life in this world is left; and all heaven; and 
all God. He is behind and before. He can go back 
of the thing that troubles us.” 

“He don’t alter it, though. It ’s past and done.” 

“He sees our repentance before we come to it our- 
selves. It all stands together with Him. You don’t 
know what his mercy has done, answering the prayer 
that was to be.” 

“ Oh, if we could pray backwards ! ” I hid my 
face deeper against the pillows for a moment, as I 
said this, and then I turned suddenly and confronted 
her. 

“But you don’t believe such things as this, Mrs. 
Hathaway. You believe in dreadful justice. You 
think somebody must be punished.” 

“I know there is pain in the world, because of sin. 
I know Who has come into the world and borne the 
pain that was in it. I know that so our sins were laid 
on Him. And I know that He is mighty to help and 
to save; even to raise from the dead, and to forgive. 
When He forgave. He took away the evil. He went 
forgiving and healing, — the two together, — all the 
way through. That is all I know. But that is 
peace.” 

“But you don’t think it is for everybody. I never 
was converted. I never could find out how to be.” 

“I don’t suppose the man with the palsy, or the 
man possessed with the devils, found out how to be 
cured. If they had, they would have had no need to 
come to Jesus.” 


TELLING AUNT ILDY. 


261 


4 

“I never could find out that I had been, then.” 

“The woman who touched the hem of his garment 
felt in her body that she was healed of her plague. 
Once to feel Him close ; that is all, Anstiss ; then you 
mmt believe ; then you will know that you are begin- 
ning to he healed.” 

Was that all? 

And yet there was a step; something to be done in 
the spirit, that was still mystical to me. To go to 
Him as those people went ; to fall down before Him as 
He stood in the way, — one could do that ; and when 
the bodily healing came, one could believe and glorify 
God. But He had passed into the heavens ; whether 
Heaven touched my spirit, or the spirit dreamed and 
deluded itself, — how could I tell ? 

I believed that I knew something, faintly, of the 
gift of God ; my heart swelled at a high thought, or 
the clearness of a truth witnessed to again and again, 
till I was glad and sure. I longed for purity, and 
strength, and harmony; but this personal believing, 
this direct healing, — should I ever come to that ? 

Martha had asked me one day, in her downright, 
literal way, if I had ever experienced religion. She 
thought she had, I knew; I did not see why I was so 
far behind her. 

“A little — sometimes,” I answered; and I think I 
answered truth. 

“Hugh!” said Martha bluffly; “perhaps, then, 
the Lord will save you a little — sometimes. ” 

And yet I knew that it was a little — sometimes, 
with the best of them. They owned it ; they declared 
as much from the pulpits; they prayed for “seasons of 
refreshing.” Everything did not come all at once, or 
stay continuously. What did come more than had 
come to me ? 

It was not beautiful thought I wanted, now ; it wa,s 


262 


HITHERTO. 


not recognition of wonderful types and meanings, and 
the gladness of sight that takes them in. I had gone 
wrong; I was not fit to think of that New Jerusalem. 
I was down in the dust ; my life was a mistake, and I 
had put a tangle into others’ lives. Who should help 
me out of this ? Who should comfort and justify me ? 
“Justify,” — set right; that was what it meant, that 
was what I wanted. And then the phrase repeated 
itself in my memory, “ justification by faith ; ” was 
this the way of it ? A full and healing forgiveness ? 
Was this the “believe and be saved” of the Gospel? 
Out of my own especial sin, and bewilderment, and 
misery ? 

I got this glimpse ; but it was a mind-glimpse. I 
stretched forth my hands into the darkness ; but I did 
not feel Him passing by; I did not hear Him ask, 
“ What wilt thou ? ” I had no sense of a staying of 
my plague. 

I could not find the invisible Christ; I wanted a 
soothing and a tenderness that should come to me by 
tones and looks ; I wanted somebody to say words of 
help and comfort and reassurance. 

Besides that, I wanted somebody to tell me just 
what I ought to do. 

I wanted it more before those next days were over. 

What possessed me ? And what possessed Richard 
Hathaway? As true as I live, I had never had a 
thought of this before., I went up the Long Orchard. 
It was in the late afternoon. Not that same day; but 
several days later. 

I went up alone, and stood by the broad wall, and 
leaned upon it. 

There seemed to be so much rest over among the 
hills. They were full of cradles and shadows. I sent 
my restless thought and pain out there, as if I could 
lay it down so, like a tired thing. I tossed in spirit 


TELLING AUNT ILLY. 


263 


among those soft green cushions and gentle hollows. 
That is the correspondence and suggestion; that is 
what the earth bends and swells and dints for; the eye 
and the heart would weary, like a bird at sea, over 
dead, pitiless plains. 

I was away off there, unmindful of what was coming 
near. Richard, climbing the pasture-side toward me 
from his meadow mowings, came close before I knew. 

He came down along the wall from above, where he 
reached the brow; he stopped beside me, on the other 
side. There was a wall between us; it was truer than 
he knew. 

And yet it was a comfort having him there, just 
that space off. 

I think he hardly knew what to begin to say, now 
he had come there; so he was awkwardly still for a 
minute or two. Then he had to say something, for 
he had not come without a meaning; and it could not 
be a common word of unmeaning after that pause. 

“You ’re worrying away the good of Broadfields, 
Anstiss; you won’t get the rest you came for.” He 
remembered that I had said that ; he laid away words 
in his heart so, and thought them over. 

“I can’t help it, Richard; I ’ve gone wrong. You 
know what it is; everybody knows. I didn’t mean 
it; I didn’t know what I meant; but I ought to have 
known. Everybody blames me.” 

“I don’t blame you; you ’ll know next time.” 

He spoke before he thought ; words of common usage 
such as people say in comfort for common mistakes. 
Then something in his own speech seemed to startle 
him, with an unintended application. 

“I mean, — well, we all have to get wisdom by 
paying for it.” 

“If that was all! If other people didn’t have to 


264 


HITHERTO. 


“That ’s where it costs.” 

He paused. He could not help me there. 

“I’m sorry, Nansie. I’m sorry for you — and 
everybody. But I don’t know as you could help it; 
I don’t know as you need to blame yourself so much.” 

“Yes, you do, Richard. You know you would 
blame me if — it was your place.” 

There was no grammar in my blundering speech, of 
which I felt the strangeness as I made it; hut he 
understood; he put himself in the place I thought of. 

“I don’t know, Anstiss; I shouldn’t have much 
left to blame with ; it would take the whole of me to 
bear it, I think.” 

What had I done? What did he mean? What 
was I rushing upon now ? I hurried to say something 
different. 

“I wish I knew what I ought to do. I think I 
should like to go away somewhere. To some still 
place where nobody would come. I wonder ” — and I 
laughed, nervously, at what suggested itself, as I still 
looked off there among the quiet hills — “ if the Pol- 
isher girls would take me to board ! ” 

I don’t think Richard heard what I said. He was 
intent upon what had been spoken just before. 

“I never will blame you, Anstiss; I didn’t suppose 
I should say anything about it yet awhile; hut I’ve 
always been thinking of it; could you — don’t you 
think — you might be contented at the farm? With 
me? Mightn’t we get along together as well as the 
rest of the world ? ” 

[Oh, Richard! Silently his heart was brimful of 
beautiful things; of thoughts of how he would take 
Anstiss to his arms, and shelter her, and make her 
home glad for her all her life long, if she would only 
let him ; of tender longing to smooth every roughness, 


TELLING AUNT ILDY. 


265 

and soothe every pain for her ; of humble self-disparage- 
ment that would not let him be eloquent in words; of 
the image of a joy that all “the rest of the world” 
could neither hold nor conceive of ; of a prayer to God 
in this tremulous poise of fate, that this great joy 
might come to him ; of a manly gathering of himself 
to bear what might be instead; of generous will that, 
come what might, he would keep his word and not 
blame her ; and this was the best he could do with it ! 
When the well is deep, there is so often nothing to 
draw with !] 

“Oh, Richard! No! no! Take it back, please!” 

We stood there perfectly silent, unmoving. Neither 
dared remind the other, by the lifting of a finger, of 
a painful presence. Our words that we had spoken 
went out into the air, and sent their viewless vibrations 
far off among the hills. Into the world and space; 
full of the words and cries and moans of men, the 
confused and crowded writing of human life. 

[Anstiss did not see how pale he grew; how the lips 
set themselves, and still trembled; how, holding his 
body motionless, the whole man yet visibly reeled.] 

I should not have dared look up, if it had been a 
year; it seemed a time I could not measure, that we 
stood so. Then Richard put his hand out across the 
wall that was between us. He lifted mine, and closed 
his fingers firmly round it. 

“It is taken back, Anstiss.” 

That was all he said. He laid my hand down, 
slowly, tenderly, upon the stones where it had been 
before. Laid it down, like a thing he gave up, gently. 
And then he turned back, and walked away swiftly, 
down the slope over which he had climbed to me, and 
out of sight. 


266 


HITHERTO. 


My hand, that I had refused him, lay there, dropped 
from loving fingers, upon the rough stones, where it 
had been before. 

What different could I have said ? If Richard could 
only have given me less or more ! He was good, — 
too good for me; and yet he asked me into such a 
mere everyday life! “To get along as well as the 
rest of the world ; ” ah, if I put my hand into any 
man’s, I wanted so that it should be to climb! To 
get above the rest of the world; I wanted, at least, 
that he should long for this, as I did, and more ; that 
looking up to him I should be looking up in the line 
that reaches from earth to heaven; up the slope of the 
beautiful ladder whereon the angels of God go up and 
down. 

He could give me home and peace, — peace that 
should reach just as deep, and only so, as the circum- 
stance of day by day. But the deep-sea peace, — who 
should find that for me ? 

What was I that I should demand so much? Yet 
to be more, — this was just why I demanded it. It 
would not have been right to marry Richard Hatha- 
way. 

I might never love, and be loved, as my nature 
craved. Well, that was God’s denying. He had 
shown me what love and life might be, and He had 
said. It is not for thee. 

The world is full; but in it all I might not, in a 
lifetime, come face to face with a man of such kingly 
spirit and presence as I dreamed of, — as I had met 
in Grandon Cope. 

I could not but think of him ; he represented to me 
my ideal ; yet it was not a disappointed hope or imagi- 
nation, even, that connected itself, directly, with him. 
I had been almost content to be his sister ; to live with 


TELLING AUNT ILDY. 


267 


one nearer my own level, under the benediction of such 
brotherhood ; to grow toward the height with one who 
looked toward it as well as I. If he had stayed as he 
was ; if he could have always seemed to me something 
so above all common love and liking, I should never 
have known better; but that he should love, — and 
that his love should be Augusta Hare ! This it was 
that wakened me; that shook roughly all my half- 
formed thought and purpose ; that threw into a confu- 
sion of disintegration all the half-crystallized possibil- 
ities of my life. 

And after this, that Richard — dear, kind, good, 
commonplace Richard — should come and ask me if 
“we might not get along together as well as the rest 
of the world! ” I could but cry out the “No, no! ” 
that was such a thrust of cruel pain ; but that was the 
only true answer to his word. 

Yet I lay wakeful all that night, suffering the 
rebound of my own thrust. Why should nobody be 
happy ? Why should one not only be denied, but be 
forced - to deny others ? If I could have been noble 
enough, might I not have set self aside, and done my 
best for so good a man as Richard Hathaway ? Need 
I, at any rate, have been so cruelly abrupt ? Need I 
have shouted that reiterated “No! ” so instantly into 
his ears? I had acted from the self-impulse, only; I 
had been cruel. 

Hope knew I was awake and restless ; she gave over 
sleep herself in the early morning, and tried to say 
kind words to me; she thought I was worrying still 
over the old story. 

I lay still in bed, while she got up at last, and 
moved about the room, dressing. When she was 
nearly ready, she turned round to me from the toilet 
glass, in which I suppose she had been watching my 
face more than her own. 


268 


HITHERTO. 


“Anstiss, dear, you have had no good of your 
night ; you had better lie and sleep, and let me bring 
your breakfast up.” 

That word about breakfast, and the thought of go- 
ing downstairs, sent the shock of it all through me 
again. 

“I donT care for sleep, Hope, or breakfast, either,” 
I cried out; “hut I can’t go down. It is more than 
you know; I can’t see Richard to-day. Hope, I ’ve 
treated him — shamefully ! ” 

She dropped her hand, with the comb in it, down 
upon the table. She pressed against it, and lifted 
herself up, tall and straight and indignant, in her sur- 
prise. Something in the light of her clear eyes was 
like a blaze, and. frightened me. 

“Then you ’ve treated shamefully the lovingest, 
patientest, grand-heartedest man that breathes ! ” 

She said it slowly, word after word, and then she 
was quite silent, and turned away from me again. 

I would not say a syllable to justify myself, for I 
did not think I had the right ; hut neither would I lie 
there, a crushed, ailing thing. I got up with a kind 
of dignity, and began to dress. 

I would not cringe utterly under her rebuke; for 
there was a half of me yet noble enough to stand in 
her own attitude over the other half. I could rebuke 
myself ; so I was not wholly mean. 

In a pride like this I kept silence, also, awhile; 
hut if I would not let my worse self quarrel with 
Hope’s generous anger, neither would I permit that it 
should seem so. Besides, I could ill afford, at this 
moment, to lose her love and counsel. 

I let it stand so, as a thing neither disputed nor 
abjectly acknowledged ; and I said, after a while, as 
one who had still a claim to credit for a will to act 
rightly, “Hope, I need advice. I can’t stay here. 


TELLING AUNT ILDY. 269 

If I go home, nobody knows there, and things will be 
hard. I am all alone with my troubles.” 

I said it quietly, and with a certain strength. I 
would not plead for any mercy or friendship. 

Then it was that she answered me, not unkindly, 
“If I were you, Anstiss, I would tell the whole to 
Aunt Ildy.” At the moment, I threw it aside, as a 
refusal of all counsel. It went for nothing; yet I 
know it was Hope’s best thought for me. I know she 
would, in my place, have done that very thing. She 
had never seen Aunt Ildy quite as I did. She had a 
genius for discerning the good and the available in 
people, as she discerned it in things. Nothing was 
absolute rags and hopelessness to her. There was 
nothing that could not be “made to do.” She drew 
straight to the sterling metal in the midst of the ore, 
like a loadstone. She made for that; she placed her- 
self in relation to that alone, ignoring the rest. 

She and Miss Chism were good friends. Aunt 
Ildy’s strong uprightness, even her hardness, had a 
charm for Hope Devine. 

“You knew what to calculate upon, with her,” she 
said. •“She expected everybody to do just right, that 
was all. There was something fine in her not being 
satisfied with anything else. It had been hard for a 
little thoughtless child, very like ; but a woman grown 
might be glad of a friend like her.” 

“See how good she would be to you if any real, 
great trouble — a trouble such as she could under- 
stand — was to come to you. She is just one of that 
kind.” 

So Hope had said, one day, and so, now, I know 
she really thought that the best thing I could do would 
be to tell Aunt Ildy. 

But while this thought lay discarded, for the time, 
in my mind, something else possessed me, half ag- 


270 


HITHERTO. 


grieved as I was with Hope, and longing truly, also, 
that some good and comfort, that I could not give, 
should come to Richard Hathaway. 

Hope was kind, but there was a shade of reproach- 
ful gravity and reserve that stayed about her. It was 
hard for me to bear this ; it irritated me. 

All at once, when we were alone, afterward, that 
morning, catching this look of hers, and remembering 
her words of him so deliberately and protractedly su- 
perlative, I spoke out recklessly. 

“Hope, why don’t you marry him yourself? ” 

Hope’s cheeks were on fire, but her eyes looked 
large and calm, straight through me. 

“I don’t think you mean that, Anstiss, ” she said 
proudly. 

“No, I didn’t, — I don’t mean it, so, Hope. I 
beg your pardon, it was half in joke ; but I do mean it 
is the best thing I could wish for him; and I do wish 
him good; I think he will ask you some time. He 
does n’t know how much you are to him. When he 
does, — ask, I mean, — if you can help it, don’t say 
no. He deserves you; he is too good for me.” 

The color stayed in her cheeks, her eyes softened a 
little. 

“You have no right to suppose such a thing; hut I 
should say no.” 

“You can’t tell, now, Hope.” 

“I can; because I couldn’t take a thing that 
did n’t belong to me, not even if I wanted it. Not 
even if I picked it up in the dust, — knowing who the 
owner was. ” 

“But if the owner wasn’t fit to have it; if it had 
been left behind, or thrown away ? ” 

“If they didn’t know, — if it was a child, perhaps, 
— I ’d keep it as safe as I could till they found out 
better, and wanted it, and came back for it ; it 
would n’t be mine.” 


TELLING AUNT ILDY. 


271 


Hope did not stop for the parsing; but it was only 
the objective pronoun that was confused; in the light 
of her pure honesty, the possessive case was clear. 

I was ashamed of my unconsidered impertinence; 
yet I was all the more sure of my inspiration. I was 
sure it would be a good thing if Richard Hathaway 
and Hope Devine were married. 

Before Aunt Ildy came driving out to the farm 
that afternoon in Wimbish’s high, old-fashioned, two- 
wheeled chaise, I had made up my mind. 

There were two hours before tea, and an hour after ; 
I should have plenty of time. 

Did anybody ever try the experiment of getting an 
opportunity to say half a dozen sentences to an indi- 
vidual, by that person’s self, and find in three hours, 
or days, or weeks even, that there was plenty of time? 

I went upstairs with her, into the southwest cham- 
ber, while she changed her cap. I stood, gathering 
myself for the plunge, and waited; watching the little 
white balls on the curtain-fringes bobbing in the wind, 
just as I had watched them that day, years ago, when 
I had had to tell about the bonnet. She stood just 
where she stood then, and was putting pins in her cap 
in the selfsame way, with the selfsame angle in her 
elbow. 

I waited for the elbow to come down; for there is 
no use in speaking to any woman in that position, 
putting a critical pin into hair or cap, with all the 
circulation and respiration stopped, and nerves in a 
twist, by the upward reach and strain in a tight dress. 
Anybody who would take anybody’s else affairs into 
consideration, under such circumstances, would have 
no cap to pin, because she would be nothing else than 
an angel with wings and long hair. 

By the time the elbow came down, Mrs. Hathaway 
came in, and when we all went downstairs we seated 


272 


HITHERTO, 


ourselves in the keeping-room with our work, and be- 
gan to “spend the afternoon.” Once, when Mrs. 
Hathaway went out, for a few hospitably demanded 
minutes, and Hope followed presently, I think with 
remembrance of the opportunity I needed, Martha 
seized the chance for a purpose of her own, which re- 
quired no preparation of nerve ; only a glance from side 
to side, with her head very much in advance of the 
rest of her, as she came in reconnoitring to see if the 
coast were clear. 

“Oh, Miss Chism, you air at lezhure, ain’t you? 
I come in a-purpose to see. I was goin’ to ask a great 
obleedgement of you. You see, I want a gown, — a 
calicker gown; an’ there ain’t nothing o’ the name or 
natur’ that you couldn’t shoot straws through, an’ 
that would n’t make you cross-eyed to look at, in 
Broadfields village. I wanted to see if you ’d buy me 
one in New Oxford, an’ let Richard take it next time 
he ’s in. I ’m willing to go as fur as two an’ six- 
pence for a good English calicker, spry-colored^ an’ 
tasty, an’ one that ’ll wash. An’ there ’s the money. 
Nine yards, — three dollars, — an’ four an’ sixpence. 
I shan’t begrudge it if yoii pay the whole; but if you 
can get it any more reasonable, so much the better.” 

By the time the money was unrolled from the tight 
crush of Martha’s palm, and spread out, and handed 
over to Miss Chism, — two bank-notes, a new silver 
American half, and a Spanish quarter, — and Martha 
had once more acknowledged the “obleedgement,” and 
reiterated the stipulation that the calico should be 
“spry-colored,” and finally departed, Mrs. Hathaway 
was in again; and after that I was not left alone with 
Aunt Ildy until just before we were called to tea. 

It, was no time then to begin. We could smell the 
hot, sweet, spicy flapjacks coming in from the kitchen. 
But I bespoke an opportunity when tea should be over. 


TELLING AUNT ILLY. 273 

I touched Miss Chism’s arm as she was going out be- 
fore me ; and made her stop an instant. 

“I think, Aunt Ildy, that I ’d better go home with 
you to-night, perhaps. I want to tell you something, 
after tea. Something that rather worries me,” I 
added, lest she should imagine a communication of 
some quite contrary character. 

She looked at me half sharply, for a second, with 
her “ What now ? ” expression ; but I think she only 
saw in my face an appeal and a confidence that touched 
her kindly; for she uttered a slow, non-committal, 
not unfriendly “Well!” unbent her brows, and let 
me come beside her as we left the room. Afterwards 
she helped me to flapjacks at the table in a way as if 
she appreciated my reliance on her good-will. 

It was often very much according to Hope’s appre- 
hension of her; that is, if one could only think in 
time. If you confided in her, if you gave her credit 
for good feeling, and trusted to it, — if you sought 
her advice ; above all, if you followed it submissively, 
— you were on the sunny side, then. You were en 
rapport ; and all the strength of her stern, stanch na- 
ture was thrown with and for, instead of against, you. 
It was no mean dependence. When tea was over, 
Mrs. Hathaway proposed going down the garden, or 
up the orchard ; which would Ildy like ? 

“Oh, it don’t make any odds to me. Down the 
garden, I guess ; but I want Anstiss upstairs, first, a 
minute or two. You need n’t wait. We ’ll come 
down. ” 

So I followed her, feeling it harder, so, for the de- 
liberation and expectancy; yet easier, also, for Aunt 
Ildy’ s prepossessed benignity. Poor Aunt Ildy! Af- 
ter all, she was left very much iij. her own hard, single, 
old life ! 

I determined to speak straight to what I wanted. 


274 


HITHERTO. 


whether it were there or not. To a hidden love for 
me in her heart ; to a hidden sympathetic possibility. 

“Aunt Ildy, ” I began, “I ’m in a real trouble. I 
want you to tell me what to do. I ought to have pre- 
vented it before; I wish I had asked you sooner. I 
know what Allard Cope means, now ; and I know that 
I can only be sorry for it, and — wish — he would n’t 
mean it.” 

“Has he said anything? ” 

“No; but he would have. I stopped it; I would n’t 
ride to South Side with him. Mrs. Hathaway saw ; 
she said I ought n’t — unless ” — 

“That won’t stop it, if he ’s got it to say.” 

“I think he understood; and besides — Augusta 
Hare has been here ; and she said things. I answered 
her so that — she knows. I don’t believe he ’d come 
out here again.” 

“Then why don’t you stay? It’s the best place. 
I don’t see but it ’s all over.” 

Something like a shadow of hardness came again 
over Aunt Ildy’s face. Something — her sympathy, 
or her intent to help — that had been coming, stopped 
itself short, and fell back, as it were, in her eyes; 
took itself back ; not wanted. As if she had run to a 
fire, and found that somebody else *had put it out. 
Aunt Ildy would not have liked to do that. 

“Oh, Aunt Ildy! ” I hastened out with, “that ’s 
only the beginning! That isn’t the worst. Aunt 
Ildy, — Richard Hathaway wants me to marry him, 
too, and I can’t! ” 

“Too? I should presume not.” Aunt Ildy smiled 
in a rather cast-iron way, at her own grammatical 
quickness and wit. Then she grew grave again, with 
a softening of real concern in her face. 

“I can’t stay here, you see,” I said. “And what 
shall I do at home? They’ll expect me at South 


TELLING AUNT ILDY. 


275 


Side. Perhaps they ’ll send Allard over. There ’ll 
be all sorts of things. There does n’t seem to be any 
place for me.” 

I do not know why she did not blame me. Per- 
haps because a difficulty always roused her whole en- 
ergy to grapple with itself; perhaps because, now that 
the realities of life had come to me so suddenly and 
thickly, she felt a sort of respect for my individuality. 
In my new relation to great questions, I stood — 
passed out of my familiar childishness and inferior- 
ity — in a sort of strangerhood, all at once. I had 
affairs; responsibilities; I was no longer in mere 
training and anticipation. I was not a child, to be 
tutored, — I was a woman, to be counseled ; I had 
come to her with confidence. At that moment Aunt 
Ildy took a new attitude toward me. 

She had done, all these years, what she thought was 
“good for me;” she had tried, with her rigid pro- 
cesses, to prepare me for life. Now life, that has its 
separate burden for each, was upon me. Her office 
was, as it were, over. She could set aside discipline, 
and be my friend. Especially, as I so entreated it. 
I think she felt my coming to her to be her reward. 
And doubtless it was. No good that has been truly 
meant, though in the midst of mistake, shall, in any 
upshot of life, be utterly lost. In the end of things 
the angels shall always come and gather the wheat 
from among the tares. 

I felt light of heart when my telling was over. 
Since Aunt Ildy did not condemn me, she was sure 
for help. I had laid my burden on ample shoulders. 

“The first thing, she said, “is for you to go home 
with me to-night, of course. You can be packing up 
your things while I go down to Abby Hathaway. And 
mind and turn your skirts before you fold your gowns. 
And double the sleeves in the middle and pull them 


276 


HITHEBTO. 


out flat. I ’ll see to something for you. Does Mrs. 
Hathaway know ? ” 

“Not from me.” 

“I shan’t tell her. You need n’t pack up any wor- 
ries. You can get them anywhere as you go along.” 

“You are very kind, Aunt Ildy, ” I said, with my 
head in the closet, beginning to take down dresses. 
There was a little oddness of my voice, I knew; but 
the smother of the closet covered that. I had learned 
not to he demonstrative with Aunt Ildy. Actions 
were better than words, was her doctrine. I could 
only determine within myself to roll up her lavender 
satin cap-strings very carefully, and to have all her 
things comfortably ready for her downstairs, when she 
came in ; and to be very particular about my own fold- 
ings as she had charged me. For the rest, I would 
watch opportunity. 

She was laying the best cap on the bed, and putting 
on her bonnet cap, over which she tied a handkerchief 
for her garden walk. She said nothing at all to my 
last words until she was just going out of the door. 
Then she turned her head over her shoulder. 

“That depends — on behavior. When people de- 
serve kindness, they get it. Pinch those ruffles up 
with your thumb and finger. You ’ve kept that pink 
muslin pretty nice.” Aunt Ildy never aimed direct 
at the thing that most pleased her, in her commenda- 
tions; she always caromed. She was satisfied with 
me to-night. She thought I had behaved well. I was 
half of good cheer, even in the midst of my troubles. 

But it was hard to bear when Richard Hathaway, 
doing just as he always had done, and always, I knew, 
would do, brought round Aunt Ildy’s horse and chaise, 
and helped us in, holding the reins till we were seated ; 
and then shook hands, friendly and warmly, with her 
first, and then with me. Not the least difference; 


TELLING AUNT ILDY. 


277 


no reminder in the grasp or in the loosing; he had 
“taken it all back.” He kept it back out of his face, 
even. He never would trouble me with it again. I 
knew that I left a noble heart there behind me, hold- 
ing its own pain, silently. At that moment, at least, 
I knew this of Richard Hathaway. 

Yet the way in which he bore himself comforted 
me, in spite of my knowledge, already; just as he 
meant it should. 

The reaction of rest began to come, after the agita- 
tions of so many days; I began to be drawn from my 
introspections to things outside, which took me almost 
with surprise that they should still be there. The even- 
ing air blew calm and cool ; the old road lay between 
its familiar woods and fields; Aunt Ildy slapped the 
reins up and down on the back of Wimbish’s easy- 
going roan; she left me in silent peace for a whole 
mile or more. All that way the rhythm of the slow- 
dropping hoofs had been lulling my busy thoughts, and 
hushing sorry ones away to sleep; heart and brain 
cannot throb and hurry to such a measurement as that. 
Truly as I grieved for what I had done, I seemed to 
have left it more than a mile behind me. 

Aunt Ildy spoke at last. 

“I’ve been thinking,” she said, holding the reins 
up very high and tight, one in each hand, and keeping 
her eyes unswervingly upon the horse’s ears, as he 
took a mild trot, coming successfully out of a down- 
hill creep upon a stretch of safe, level, meadow road, 
— “I ’ve been thinking it over. How should you like 
to go to Boston ? ” 

It was like the thunder-clap by which the genie 
came with gifts, into the “Ai’abian Nights.” 

That she should have thought of this on my behalf! 
That such a thing should be “ worth while ” for me ! 
It was as if I had died, and found out that they would 


278 


HITHERTO. 


have mourning and a headstone for me, as to which I 
had wondered in my childish days. I shrank within 
myself with fear of too ready appropriation of such 
consequence; with humility and undesert. I always 
did so ; I believe I should have done so in my grave', 
if I could know they were making any fuss about me 
overhead. 

“Well!” shot Miss Chism, sharply, into my si- 
lence. 

“Oh, Aunt Ildy, what can I say? It’s a great 
deal too much to do for me. And it ’s — it ’s the 
kindness I care for ! ” 

“Hngh! ” said Miss Ildy, through her nose. But 
those four consonants held her displeasure; it was not 
in her face. “There ’s no need of any highfalutin 
about it, as I know of. It wasn’t all for you. I 
had some thoughts of going, before. You have n’t 
answered me yet.” 

It was very hard to be just properly and spontane- 
ously grateful, and yet not to assume too much. Of 
course it could not have all been for me. But she did 
not make her cake all for me. By no means; Miss 
Chism was careful of her cake, and kept it mostly for 
worth-while occasions; yet sometimes she would cut 
me a piece and offer it; then I was all the more 
thankful. 

I calmed down my effusion instantly, however. 

“Whether I would like it,” said I, suppressing the 
exclamation point, and with as matter-of-fact intona- 
tion as a district school-child repeating the word before 
spelling. “Yes, Aunt Ildy, I just exactly should.” 

“Then I ’ve about made up my mind that you just 
exactly shall. That is, if nothing happens. I ’m go- 
ing to see about it. You ’ll want new sleeves to your 
striped muslin delaine; it’ll do to travel in, and to 
wear cool days.” 


TELLING AUNT ILDY. 


279 


This was almost too ordinary and comfortable; it 
brought my self-reproaches back. I began to be jeal- 
ous of her not blaming me ; I was getting off too eas- 
ily; I could not ignore as she did. In all this there 
had not been a word of poor Richard Hathaway, and 
what I had done to him. 

“Only,” I said, “I have no right to pleasant 
things; I have made two people unhappy; I can’t 
forget that.” 

“Well, I don’t know,” she answered very coolly. 
“There isn’t much telling, perhaps, about that part. 
Maybe it ’s more than an even chance they ’ll both get 
over it.” 

I was thrown back again, as having assumed too 
much. 

“At any rate, a girl can’t marry everybody that 
asks her, and everybody else ‘ too, ’ ” she went on, 
quoting my word, and reproducing the cast-iron smile. 
“Somebody has got to stand aside. And you can’t 
say no till you are asked. It ’s best, when you can, 
to have it straight out and settle it. I hate things 
daggling on tenterhooks.” 

Aunt Ildy was thoroughly on my side, for once. It 
was manifest that she was, for some reason, well con- 
tent with things as they had fallen out. And I could 
not help drawing, silently, two other inferences from 
her cheeriness, not to say slight exhilaration of spirit. 
That she had not known much of this pain of saying 
“no,” herself; or, if she had, that it was in the com- 
fortable long ago, where pain fades out and only 
pleasantness stands. That her lovers had got bravely 
over it. Also, that it might be possible she was 
rather glad than otherwise, after all, to keep me at 
home a little longer. Out of her narrow living, per- 
haps she would have missed even me. 

The mere contingency of this drew me toward her. 


280 


HITHERTO, 


I sat, resolving upon how I would do everything hence- 
forth, for her and Uncle Royle ; how I would bear all 
her hardness patiently, and keep up zealously to all 
her requirements ; never forgetting that she had stood 
by me, when my trouble came. 

A faint flavor suggests more than satiety can give. 
A very little gentleness, an ever so small relaxing, 
toward me from Aunt Ildy, stirred me more than 
tender kisses and embraces from another. I kissed 
and embraced her that night in my heart. 

It went on so through the whole. I had never, ap- 
parently, made such a stroke for myself in my life. 

We had no more talk, all the way into New Oxford; 
Uncle Royle helped us out at the street door, and car- 
ried my box upstairs. Then he drove the horse back 
to Wimbish’s stable; and Aunt Ildy asked me if I 
would have anything to eat before I went to bed. 
That finished it with me for the night. I thanked 
her, and said no; but I went upstairs, filled; fed in 
my heart with almost more than I could hold of un- 
wonted tenderness. 

She treated me like company ; almost like a stranger. 
In one way, perhaps, I had become as a stranger, with 
a strange interest, instead of a familiar contempt. I 
was a girl with a love-history about me ; I was some- 
thing quite different from little Anstiss Dolbeare ; for 
once I was “too big a girl,” in a way greatly to my 
own advantage. 

Aunt Ildy’s ideas and purposes, especially of good- 
will, were like powder-blasting; a great deal of quiet, 
perhaps carefully secret drilling, that took a long time ; 
then a sudden touch. Heaven knows how, to a few 
grains of some quality of generous expansiveness, that 
she kept by her disguised ordinarily in a black inert- 
ness; then a sudden outcome, explosive, from which 
one could only stand aside. She would by no means 


TELLING AUNT ILDY. 281 

let you draw close. It was a hands-off, gunpowder 
beneficence. 

She did not say a word more to me of our journey 
for two days; then, all at once, over some scalding 
sweet-pickle she was watching at the kitchen fire, she 
lifted up her head and spoke : — 

“I ’ve about made up my mind to another thing. 
Your uncle has n’t any objection, and I shall ask Abby 
Hathaway to let Hope Devine go with us. Hand me 
the skimmer — quick! There, — now the allspice. 
You may call Lucretia in to lift the kettle off. Fly 
round ! ” 


CHAPTER XVIII. 

BOSTON, AND THE HOLGATES. 

Neither Hope Devine nor I had ever been a jour- 
ney in the cars. The railroads were yet a novelty. 
We had to go down to Palmer in the stage, a half- 
day’s ride ; and beyond that the steam-rush of three 
hours was a wonder and an excitement. 

People felt, then, all the travel that was concen- 
trated so suddenly into such little space of time, as 
they have forgot to feel it now. Nobody calls it trav- 
eling to go from Boston to Berkshire, to-day; it is 
only stepping through the house from the front door 
to the back that opens into the hills. If you were 
really going out, you don’t more than get your gloves 
on as you pass along the hall. 

The grand hall that runs through the old home 
building! It used to he the perilous Bay Path, before 
the rooms were all finished at the rear, or the floor 
laid quite through. Afterward, it was the pleasant 
highway, beside which comfortable doors stood open 
all along. We have forgotten about that, now; we 
don’t know what half the rooms are like; we go over 
the whole world, as we read its news, by captions. It 
is just Alpha and Omega; we start from some whence, 
and are expressed through to somewhere; we get in at 
one depot, and out at another that looks just like it ; 
as to the between, — oh, that was on the back of the 
railway check, or among the much-crumpled leaves of 
the “Guide.” 

Aunt Ildy and Hope and I did not go to Boston so, 
that day. We knew that there was to be sleight-of- 


BOSTON, AND THE HOLGATES, 


283 


hand about it, but we kept our eyes wide open to the 
operation, and meant to apprehend as much of it as 
we could. Brains wouldn’t stand the stretch of that 
determined realization of detail, on the long modern 
routes. People soon learned to take to their railway 
libraries, and to leave off looking out at windows. 

We began, or Aunt Ildy did, by laying in such a 
stock of provisions as one might take now for a seven 
days’ journey through to San Francisco. There was 
no knowing how much of an interval there would be 
between the arrival of the stage and the starting of 
the train from Palmer, or whether it might not be 
gone before we got there. Steam was a strange, new 
agent, not to be blindly trusted or calculated upon. 

At any rate, we were to dine out of our basket. 
And a very nice basket it was to dine out of. Trav- 
eling was like sickness, — an emergency that brought 
out the most sacred of Aunt Ildy’s stores; things 
from the top shelf and the inside cupboard, set away 
to “keep on hand.” I never quite realized how these 
things ever got used up. We made them every year 
and put them by ; we were hardly ever sick, and as to 
journeys and exposures and needs in that sort, this 
was the first I have memory of. I believe Aunt Ildy 
secretly gave many a good thing to those whose emer- 
gencies came oftener. She would not let her left 
hand know it, if her right hand did it ; it was not her 
way to own to any tenderness of sympathy or generos- 
ity; besides, she would not have given her left hand 
the precedent. 

We had plum cake, made for unexpected company, 
and by no means brought out when there was premedi- 
tation sufficient for beating up something of the lighter 
kinds, — plum cake rich enough for an unexpected 
wedding, and whose flavor toned and mellowed with a 
reasonable age ; there was a little white paper bag of 


284 


HITHERTO. 


candied orange-peel, such as nobody but Aunt Ildy 
knew the secret of; and there was a small bottle of 
her oldest cherry brandy, since there could be “no 
knowing ” either, what might happen to some of us 
before we got there. Something terrible might easily 
have happened, if we had been going much farther, 
and if we had kept on faithfully with that basket. 
The cold boiled chicken and the buttered rolls, the 
rounds of pound-cake gingerbread and the slices of new 
cheese, were the pieces of resistance. 

“It makes me feel so grand! ” said Hope Devine, 
her eyes shining, and her whole face lifted up. 

The puff and the rush of the first few minutes were 
over like the tug and flap of a great bird’s wings as it 
rises, and the train had taken its pace, the swift, 
skimming shoot across the country, that made the post- 
and-rail fences sweep by in blurred lines, and the 
green fields scud under us, and the trees and the houses 
waltz around each other and out of sight, away through 
the whole reach of the shifting landscape. 

“It makes me proud to be one! ” 

“ One what ? ” said literal Aunt Ildy. 

“ One — anybody, ” Hope answered, laughing. 

She took for granted people knew what she meant. 
She was apt to speak in half sentences, and it was easy 
for me to understand her so. The rest was in her 
face. 

Something kindled and flashed forth from her now, 
like the soul of the force that was urging us on. The 
pride and the glory and the triumph of humanity were 
exultant in Hope Devine, taking her first ride in the 
common railroad car. 

“It makes me think of the ‘powers.’ ‘Powers and 
principalities,’ and the ‘Prince of the power of the 
air. ’ There are such great things ; and they seem so 
awful. And yet they are only things.” 


BOSTON, AND THE HOLGATES. 


285 

She went on with something else, to herself, in a 
tone hushed just below the covering rumble of the 
wheels. She thought she spoke in secret ; but I heard 
a word or two, and I knew the rest. 

“‘Nor life, nor death, nor principalities, nor powers, 
nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor 
depth, nor any other creature ’ ” — 

Her heart and her face finished that also. 

“It doesn’t matter; not even what ’s to come; how 
much they find out, or what they do, among the 
things, does it? It’s grand, and splendid, and it 
grows almost frightful with the ever-so-much of it, — 
it crowds so; hut it isn’t the way we’ve got to go, 
and it can’t hinder, nor change; there ’s a short way 
out of it and overhead of all. You can shut your 
eyes and be there.” 

Absent from these things and present with Him. 
Hope lived just so simply and sublimely close to Christ 
and his heaven. The world could not confuse her; 
the powers of the air could not stop her short with their 
magnificence, their triumph, or their terror. 

To go down among the great places of the earth 
with her would be like going with one of the angels. 

Who knows what going or doing are like to any one, 
only seeing the outside of it? We were just two coun- 
try girls, with a plain old lady and a big dinner-basket 
and railway tickets on a train to Boston. A train to 
Boston was an old story already. What did our new- 
ness signify? 

I think we all felt grand when we steamed into the 
little old Worcester passenger - house, among a few 
street children, gathered to “see the cars,” some 
groups of people waiting to meet friends, and a good 
indication of future possibilities in the way of a hack- 
driver throng. We were the Western Express, — 
“Express” sounded fine and important in those days. 


286 


HITHERTO. 


— and the rails were hot behind us with our hurry. 
Aunt Ildy sat up like the prow of a ship sailing in 
from far seas to her moorings. Hope’s eyes were full 
of light and expectation, and I felt my heart beat 
quick as I came into the beginning of the city that I 
had never seen. 

It was a pleasant house that we went to, in the 
neighborhood of Summer Street and Church Green. 
Great crowns of forest trees surged up among the chim- 
neys, and the sidewalks were still and shady, and the 
houses had little gardens in front. Children rolled 
their hoops, and babies’ carriages went up and down, 
where heavy drays and cases of merchandise fill up the 
whole street-way now, and block the pavement before 
great warehouses. 

Boston was in her pleasant young matronhood, then. 
She wore her own hair, as it were ; and had not capped 
it with any foreign tawdriness, or taken to false, star- 
ing fronts. She had not had her dear old irregular 
teeth out, that gave half the home sweetness to her 
smile, and replaced them with the square, stiff, pol- 
ished blocks that gi’in from old, care-lined, art-fin- 
ished faces. 

Boston was individual, and not conglomerate, as it 
is to-day. There is only a little bit of the old place 
left, now; streets of charming houses without any 
modern improvements, over behind Beacon Hill, and 
beyond the State House. The South End is a piece 
of New York patched on, and Back Bay has been filled 
up, and a section of Paris dumped down into it. 

I am glad I remember it as it was. 

In this still, simjDle Boston, where, just behind her 
busy wharves, there were places to live and to think 
in, there were many things beginning besides railroads 
and steamships. We came into the midst of these, or 
the sound of them. 


BOSTON, AND THE HOLGATES. 


287 


It was the time of the first flush and ferment of 
rational, moral, physiological, philanthropic, tran- 
scendental, SBsthetical philosophy. Miss Sedgwick had 
written “Home,” and the “Rich Poor Man,” and 
“Means and Ends; ” “Combe’s Physiology” was be- 
ing desperately studied in young ladies’ schools. There 
was unlimited and unmitigated cold bathing; and cal- 
isthenics were coming into vogue. Theodore Parker 
was preaching; Emerson was thinking great thoughts 
aloud to a wondering world ; Brownson had come out 
with “New Views;” Margaret Fuller was expanding 
the rare, strange blossom of her womanhood ; and girls 
of seventeen were reading Carlyle. “The True, the 
Good, and the Beautiful, ” bound into a watchword, 
were rampant on men’s lips. A grand watchword; so 
is “ Liberty, Fraternity, Equality ; ” the thing is to 
rise to the real height of it; to reach by it to the 
more, not to pervert it to an excuse for dropping to 
the less, or the worse. 

Coming to stay with Mrs. Holgate, Aunt Ildy and 
Hope Devine and I — three diverse and unaccustomed 
souls — entered into the midst — or the edge of the 
midst — of all this. 

The Holgates had gone to a lecture when we ar- 
rived. The “family-reliance,” Liefie, or Relief, got 
tea for us, and made us comfortable. People had 
family-reliances in that old time, which gave them 
leisure to run after the new ideas. Now, they have 
been running after them so long that family-reliances 
have ceased to be educated, and the stock has run out. 
There is danger that we may have to begin anew this 
circle of humanity, and not come round to the “true, 
the good, and the beautiful ” again, in the abstract, for 
a few generations of women more. 

Mr. Holgate had been at one time concerned in a 
bookselling and publishing firm. Mrs. Holgate was a 


288 


HITHERTO. 


distant connection of the Chisms. The business and 
the cousinhood together had kept up a sort of pre-rail- 
wayite intimacy; safe standing invitations were ex- 
changed; “when you come to town,” or “if you get 
out our way,” which seldom happened. Yet now and 
then Uncle Royle spent a night at the Holgates’, when 
the transactions of trade 'took him to Boston, or he 
went there to dinner, or for a Sunday, now and then, 
during his service in the legislature; and Mrs. Hol- 
gate and the girls had once been to New Oxford. 

Mrs. Holgate was a woman whom I should shortly 
describe as having begun gesthetics rather late in life. 
They sat somehow curiously on the substratum of 
homely habit and unintrospective common-sense. She 
had a way of snatching up her raptures, as if she had 
all at once remembered them; or of making a supere- 
rogatory use of them, as of a new mental elegance or 
contrivance that she had done without all her life, 
but which it was the right and proper thing to find 
essential and inevitable now. 

She was stout, and looked externally what people 
call “settled down.” Very much so, indeed; and as 
if the settling had taken place a long time ago, and 
could not easily he disturbed ; as if you would hardly 
expect new modes of thought or action from her, or a 
new expression in her face, any more than new ways 
of doing up her hair, which women past forty were 
not apt to affect in those days. 

I noticed all this of her in five minutes after sho 
had come in with her daughters, a good deal heated 
with her summer evening walk, and looking as if dog- 
days and metaphysics together were considerably too 
much for her. 

Boston, as I said, was still green with gardens 
then; and there were hushes of home quiet in cool, 
watered streets and unprofaned “ Places, ” where vines 


BOSTON, AND THE HOLGATES, 


289 


covered the house-fronts and caged birds sang in the 
windows, that almost feigned a feeling of the country 
and the woods ; and people were content to abide there, 
for the most part, even amid the August heats. 

The two young ladies were bright-looking, hand- 
some girls, with hair tucked plain behind their ears, 
and prompt, straightforward manners, and a very Bos- 
ton-y air of determined sense and intellectuality. A 
process-of-culture expression pervaded themselves and 
the house. A little anticipative it was, also, claiming 
result by faith and purpose. As, for instance, a read- 
ing-stand in a window, which we afterward found to 
be the younger sister’s particular corner, held a large 
German dictionary open upon it, and a volume of 
“Schiller,” in the original, rested beside. We no- 
ticed subsequently that her actual studies were as yet 
limited to the rudiments of the language, but she set 
what was to be before herself and others with a truly 
apostolic pressing forward to the things before. 

In her children’s babyhood, Mrs. Holgate had been 
simply a little romantic, in an old-fashion of romance ; 
and had named her daughters respectively, Harriet 
Byron and Corinna. At the present time she espe- 
cially felicitated herself upon this second baptismal 
choice, which I think she had probably rather hit upon 
originally for its prettiness, than through any enthusi- 
astic and appreciative intimacy with Madame de Stael. 
Corinna herself evidently blessed her fate in this re- 
spect, and tried to live faithfully up to her christening, 
as Harriet did to her nose, which was rarely and deli- 
cately classic. Corinna undertook severe literature, 
and deep research; Harriet devoted herself more to 
the beautiful in art and poetry. 

They had been this 'evening to a conversational class ; 
after Margaret Fuller; subject, “the mythology of 
the Greeks.” 


290 


RITHEBTO. 


To unravel an old myth, — to find the why of it, 
— the abstract principle, — this was just now what 
interested and excited above all, and rewarded with its 
highest delight the mental enterprise of a certain por- 
tion of the young, progressive intellect of the city of 
progress. 

It was all exceedingly well; place and time accord- 
ing and proportionate ; but there was a New England 
excess in it all. Everybody must needs do the same 
style of thinking; and they must be at it all the time. 
Because great minds were comparing the old and the 
new, finding the lights that fall from different and far- 
off points in all the ages, sifting truths, and giving 
grand abstractions to the world, all they who listened, 
and who were fired by the watchwords. Progress! Cul- 
ture! must dip into the self-same abstractions; must 
find a myth in everything, and begin all their sentences 
with adverbs. 

They were like children rolling their forlorn and 
much-manipulated bits of dough from the maternal 
pie-boards, till, seeing it, one got sick of the pies be- 
forehand, and mistrusted the whole baking. 

There were circles and circles ; as there are in every- 
thing. There were those who were, and those who 
only ambitioned to be; those who rode their chariots 
of thought for the sake of the whither they might bear 
them, and they who liked the equipage and its bla- 
zonry, and the stepping in and out before the eyes of 
the multitude. 

There were restless spirits, also, to whom the old 
was tasteless and lifeless; who seized eagerly these 
roundabout fashions of coming back, through fresh and 
toilsome reasonings, to what they had and knew al- 
ready; taking back and forth from each other’s fingers 
the threads of truth in a perpetual cat’s-cradle of fan- 
cied discovery and invention ; crying out to each other 


BOSTON, AND THE HOLGATES. 291 

without ceasing, Behold, now, that is truly something 
new; that, indeed, is wonderful! 

It was a fever that had its day; that rages yet, as 
fever always does, in its breeding haunts, whence it 
bursts forth now and then as epidemic. 

The Holgates had taken it — badly; we came, as 
it were, into the midst of an infection. Aunt Ildy 
looked about her, at first, in pure mystification; then 
she began to behave as if she thought they had got a 
plague ; and to go round with her nostrils metaphori- 
cally stuffed, and to do her duty vigorously, by scat- 
tering, from time to time, some pungent, if not ill- 
savoring antiseptics. 

It was certainly a change for me, and a break upon 
the old wearing lines of thought ; but it was not pre- 
cisely what Aunt Ildy had meant and looked for. 

It stirred in me some of my own old wonderings and 
speculations; I could not help entering into it enough 
to find out a little of what it was ; sometimes I got 
light, and sometimes I grew confused. 

But I was stayed on the right and left, — by Aunt 
Ildy’s uncompromising orthodoxy and sarcastic practi- 
cality; by Hope Devine’s strange, straight vision, 
right through all mysticism and bewilderment, to what 
truly was. 

I do not believe that in all the community, so 
touched with strange fire, there was such a curious 
conjunction of elements, to test and neutralize each 
other and evolve some safe result of life to a true long- 
ing for the living reality, as was met here in Mrs. 
Holgate’s house. 

I remember bits of conversation, that sprang up 
now and then, over a breakfast or a tea, after a chap- 
ter of some new book, or a surprising modern apho- 
rism, or a fresh “ Orphic saying ; ” or in our rooms at 
night, between Hope and me, and sometimes with Aunt 


292 


HITHEBTO. 


Ildy, also, when we asked each other how it all seemed, 
and what we supposed would he the .upshot and the 
outcome of it all. I remember little momentary sit- 
uations, and the look of everybody, stamped like a 
picture upon my imagination by the force of some 
sudden peculiarity of act or word. 

I shall never forget how funnily Corinna Holgate 
startled us one day, as we all sat in the back parlor 
with our different morning work, she in her window 
with portfolio on lap, and various sheets of scribbled 
paper lying about her, on which she was making up 
some abstract of a “ conversational, ” or sketching some 
outline of ideas preparatory to one that was to be. 

Still on the Grecian myths ; still puzzling for clever 
solutions and brilliant suggestions; trying to recollect 
clearly what had been propounded and explained last 
time, or put forth in questions to be answered next. 

‘‘ Why, ” she demanded electrically, like a thunder- 
clap out of a far-off cloud of philosophic abstraction, 
across the unthinking and unexpectant summer silence 
of our commonplace, — ‘‘‘‘why was Venus fabled to 
have arisen from the foam of the sea ? ” 

“ Because you must be clean before you can be beau- 
tiful ! ” shot back Aunt Ildy, quick as a flash, — an 
irony of common-sense out of a swift, frowning cloud 
of contempt. 

HojDe and I laughed. Harriet and Mrs. Holgate, 
slow to receive and discern, looked up as if they did 
not quite know whether it were meant as Orphic or 
not; but Corinna, after a second’s breathlessness, 
jumped to her feet, let fall her papers in a Sibylline 
shower, rushed to Miss Chism, and, dropping on a 
cricket at her feet, accepted her and her word as an 
advent and an inspiration. 

“Why, that ’s grand! ” she cried. “That ’s a real 
thought I That ’s insight ! I ’ve found — a soul ! ” 


BOSTON, AND THE HOLGATES. 


293 


“Better keep quiet about your luck, then,” said 
Miss Chism, drawing away her knitting-yarn from 
under Corinna’s elbow, and shifting slightly her posi- 
tion away from the heroics. “A chicken does n’t 
peep when it ’s really got its mouth full! ” 

Corinna did not care a bit for her snubbing. It 
was only a spur. 

“Why won’t you own up? You do think. Miss 
Chism. What do you deny yourself for ? ” And 
then she quoted Emerson; about “our own rejected 
thought returning to us with a kind of offended ma- 
jesty, from the lips of others.” 

It was sufficiently ridiculous; and I believed, my- 
self, that Corinna was half funny and dexterous in 
defense, as a bright girl might be, and half in ear- 
nest, determined to win Aunt Ildy over. 

“Whatever I think, I choose to think, and be 
done with it; I wasn’t made to chew a cud, — or to 
count my breaths, to see how many I take in a day.” 

“Miss Ildy! You’re epigrammatic! You don’t 
know how clever you are ! ” 

“There! Let me alone! Don’t snarl my yarn! 
I don’t believe you know how big a fool you are, or 
will be if you go on ! ” 

“I mean to go on till I have found out, and that ’s 
the height and extreme small apex of human know- 
ledge. See how you ’ve snarled my yarn! ” 

And she went back and began to gather up her scat- 
tered papers. 

Aunt Ildy liked the girls, — their fresh, modern 
brightness, and their prettiness; especially Corinna’s 
good-humored daring, so different from what she had 
hitherto encountered; if it had not been for these 
things, and Mrs. Holgate’s genuine, old-fashioned, 
glad-to-see-you hospitality, which all her transcenden- 
talism could not alter or affect, she would have gone 
home. 


CHAPTER XIX. 


SARTOR RESARTUS. 

“It ’s the queerness of it,” said Hope. “They ’re 
at such great trouble to do things over again. It is 
just as if people should go to contriving shoes, or how 
to make wheat into bread, when they have been fed 
and shod all their lives long. Why can’t they take 
what there is in the world ? ” 

“There are thoughts to-day that haven’t been al- 
ways, ” said Corinna. 

“New receipts,” said Aunt Ildy. 

“There’s growth, you know,” said Mrs. Holgate, 
“growth, and evolution; evolution,^’ she repeated, as 
if she had groped against that landmark in the dark, 
and so laid fast hold of it with both hands, valiantly. 
“Who was it said it, Corinna, — ‘Everything be- 
comes; act and being blossom’? That was beauti- 
ful. ” 

“Not altogether new, though. Carlyle says it. 
‘Cast forth thy act, thy word, into the ever-living, 
ever- working universe; it is a seed-grain that cannot 
die; unnoticed to-day, it will be found flourishing as 
a banyan grove, — perhaps, alas ! as a hemlock for- 
est, — after a thousand years. ’ ” 

“It is older than that,” said Hope quietly, not a 
whit overawed by hearing Carlyle quoted for the first 
time. 

“‘The kingdom of heaven is like unto a grain of 
mustard-seed. ’ I think it was all said, — all that we 
ever come to ; and that, after all our wondering and 
puzzling and hard work, we go back and find it there. 


SARTOB RESARTUS. 295 

We invent the bread, and there ’s the loaf in the 
closet.” 

“But it has to be so, always,” said Corinna ea- 
gerly. “Emerson says, ‘No one can find in history 
what he has not first found in himself.’ Nor in reve- 
lation any more, I suppose.” 

“ That was all told us too, at the beginning. ‘ W e 
speak that we do know, and testify that we have seen, 
and ye receive not our witness.’ ‘If I have told you 
earthly things and ye believe not, how shall ye believe 
if I tell you of heavenly things ? ’ How can they 
think they say these things for the first time ? ” 

“Anyway, it comes back to the same. We must 
grow to it.” 

“And we cannot of ourselves add one cubit to our 
stature. Growing is living.” 

“Yes,” answered Corinna, quoting Emerson again: 
“‘What truth you have, live it, and so have more.’ ” 

“‘To him that hath, shall be given, and he shall 
have abundance;’ ‘Do the will, and ye shall know 
of the doctrine ; ’ and besides that, ” went on Hope, 
warming into self-forgetfulness, and that bright-shin- 
ing coming into her eyes, “the same word says, ‘I 
that am the Truth, am the Life. No man cometh 
unto the Father, but by me. ’ Growing is living ; and 
living is given. ‘Keep the commandments, and I will 
manifest myself, ’ — I do believe it is all there, — and 
a great deal more. I do not think I am afraid to say 
that I feel as if I could get along without Emerson.” 

“I dare say he would tell you so himself. That it 
was just what you must do.” 

“I dare say he would. And there is where he stops 
with his new word, — just where I want help. The 
other says, ‘ Come unto me ; abide with me, and I will 
give you everlasting life.’ ” 

Hope’s voice had lowered. Her cheek was crimson 


296 


HITHERTO. 


with the intensity of her impulse. There was a softer 
shining in her eyes now, — the shining up to the 
golden light of the pure spring of her tears ; they only 
shone, not fell ; she said no more, hut presently put- 
ting together some little things of ours that were to go 
upstairs, she took them in her hands and went away. 

“She’s a good girl,” said Aunt Ildy; “there’s a 
Dealing with her, I don’t doubt. All ain’t brought 
in the same way, nor don’t have the same evidences.” 

That was the end of it for then; the extremes 
touched; that which was all charged and quick with 
thrills and sparkles was neutralized into dead tranquil- 
lity. 

We were going out that morning. We all went, 
presently, and put on our things. Corinna had a Ger- 
man lesson, and Harriet wanted to buy crayons ; Mrs. 
Holgate had people to see, and black silk to match for 
new sleeves to her second-best gown; and Aunt Ildy 
and Hope and I had the inevitable shopping of country 
visitors to town. 

It was the dear, old, mixed-up Washington Street, 
then, where everything was small and wedged together, 
and you knew your way by the angles and corners, and 
nothing stared out at you through great plate glass, 
hut you must know enough to begin with to go in and 
inquire. 

Up on Tremont Row they had some new stores, and 
the first great, showy dry-goods warehouse was just 
finished between Franklin and Summer streets; but 
people shook their heads at it as at something more 
than doubtfully flashy and fast, and old ladies got be- 
wildered in being hattledored from counter to counter 
under the new department system, and bobbed little 
courtesies, and dodged right and left, to let the other 
bobbing and courtesying old ladies pass, when they 
came up against their own images in the great mirrors 
at the back. 


SARTOR RESARTUS. 


297 


Old Mrs. Gregory hadn’t done selling caps and rib- 
bons and laces in her mysterious bonnet, nor had Mrs. 
Peverelly’s sign been taken down from the confection- 
ery in the “jog.” It is of no use to tell people in 
general how we bought shoes at Williams’s, and car- 
pets at Gulliver’s, and threads and needles and Berlin 
wools in the narrow two stories at Whitney’s, and 
things unattainable elsewhere, at Quincy Tufts’. Bos- 
ton people, who have lived long enough, remember; 
and nobody else understands or cares; but there was 
something cosy and self-gratulatory in the shopping 
of those days, when one found out things and places, 
and there was a cleverness in doing it ; when a buying 
was a particular and personal having, because there 
were not inexhaustible cases and cargoes of everything 
to supply a thousand people just alike, and dress and 
trim them all in uniform, from their hair down. 

Hope liked it; it called out her Monday-and-Satur- 
day faculty; she could organize the whole expedition 
in her head beforehand; when she was with us we 
seldom had to retrace or double upon our steps; she 
put us in mind of all we wanted, just when we were 
where we could do the errands; everything fell out, 
and fell in, beautifully; it was a kind of blossoming 
of business ; and Aunt Ildy was in her serenest good- 
humor with us all. 

It is wonderful how much Hope saw in the streets ; 
how, brushing against a stranger, she somehow touched 
not an elbow, but a human life. She had no need to 
look away back to the old Greeks, this golden-eyed 
girl, to read deep words and truths of love and beauty ; 
they were nigh to her, about her daily path, offering 
their gracious text at every hand. 

Quickened to notice and compare, by all I saw of 
the new life, — the strain after life, — at the Hoi- 
gates’, I recognized this more than ever. 


298 


HITHERTO. 


I think, remembering at this after time, that rarely, 
if ever, was a day passed, or an outgoing made, how- 
ever simply, in Hope’s company, that the time and the 
going were not crowned and fulfilled by some hap- 
pening or perception, some meaning and interest, that 
were like the harvest of the hour. 

We had just got a new cap for Aunt Ildy, and were 
turning down toward Widdifield’s, about her glasses, 
which was our last business, when before us on the 
pavement a group of three passed by. 

A lady in silk and lace ; a child, a little girl, with 
dainty bonnet and delicate kid gloves, and hits of 
French boots, such as then replaced only occasionally 
the simple walking-shoes still worn; behind them, 
keeping eagerly close, almost touching them, yet care- 
fully preserving such angle of position that her follow- 
ing should not be obvious to the lady (there were 
sides to bonnets then; I wonder if they have been left 
off since on the same principle that horses’ blinders 
have, — that we needn’t shy at anything?), now and 
then venturing a finger, softly, upon the muslin folds 
of the little one’s rose-colored dress; she herself, this 
last, in an old, limp, faded calico, wearing down- 
trodden shoes and much-hedinged stockings; a sun- 
scorched bonnet, tied under the chin with ribbon that 
had ceased to be anything but string; bare hands, and 
hair filling up untidily the bent bonnet-brim, and hang- 
ing below the crumpled cape; turning her toes out, 
and falling, it seemed unconsciously, into a step and 
air the parody of that before her; wearing, all the 
while, a kind of happy dream-look in the eyes, and a 
smile under the shadow of the shabby straw, that told 
of some absorption and some satisfying beyond and 
against the accounting for of appearance. 

Hope and I were together; Aunt Ildy walked a 
little behind ; Hope was close to the common, shabby. 


SABTOR BESABTUS. 


299 


yet not ragged or suffering- looking child; something 
lightened in her face answering to the look in the 
girl’s; it was as if the two were speaking a secret lan- 
guage. 

All at once the mother, holding her daughter’s 
hand, stopped before a window in which hung delicate 
French prints and lawns. There was one with small 
purple shamrocks on a white ground; the little clus- 
tered trefoils, with their crossed stems, dropped all 
over it in a violet shower. 

“ There, that would do for you, Susie, dear ! ” And 
by her sudden stop, and the passing of the contrary 
current on the narrow walk, we were all held in an 
instant’s pause. 

Aunt Ildy, rather indignant, pressed by, and moved 
on first ; Hope caught my hand and lingered. Amongst 
us, the calico gown and the rusty bonnet were nearly 
hidden for the second or two, and in these we heard a 
little voice, thinking itself covered up and hidden also, 
that said, softly, as the two passed into the shop, — 

“So it will. For Susie, dear, — and me, dear. 
Just alike. I ’ll stand outside and look at the folks, 
ma.” 

And the little untidy thing stood up on the doorstep 
and let us go by. 

“Just think of that!” cried Hope. “Don’t you 
see? She ’s making believe it ’s her mother, and that 
she ’s another and belongs to them. I know! ” 

“Poor thing! What ’s the use? ” said I, only pity- 
ing the delusion. 

“Use ! ” exclaimed Hope. “It ’s true — ■ somewhere. 
There ’s a mother-love for her somewhere — and a giv- 
ing — just as much. There ’s an inside world! This 
only stands for it. And that lady, — and most folks, 
— for a little more than they know of, that ’s all.” 

When we got home, Mrs. Holgate asked us' if we 
had been in at the Athenaeum again. 


300 


HITHERTO. 


“We didn’t have time,” said Hope. 

“You did all your shopping, I suppose?” Corinna 
asked, a little satirically. 

“All for to-day. Yes.” 

“I waited for you there, awhile,” said Harriet. 
“I ’ve heen nearly all the morning among those casts 
of the antiques.” 

“I like the pictures best,” said Hope. 

Hope was a little hit shocked at standing face to 
face with the Venuses, and had been half afraid, I 
think, of the Laocoon. 

“You don’t understand the antiques,” said Mrs. 
Holgate forbearingly. 

“I don’t think I do, ma’am,” answered Hope 
simply. “At least, I understand some other things 
easier. ” 

They did keep at it all the time. First one thing 
and then another: ethics, aesthetics, metaphysics. 
What this said, that preached, and the other wrote. 
Everybody had a tug at the Sphinx. Life was well- 
nigh ciphered with their deciphering; reduced to hope- 
less shreds with their anatomizing. Aunt Ildy quoted 
“ Mother Goose : ” — 

“ The sow came in with the saddle, 

The little pig rocked the cradle ; 

The dish jumped up on the table 
To see the pot swallow the ladle : 

The spit that stood behind the door 
Threw the pudding-stick on the floor. 

Oddsplut ! said the gridiron. Can’t you agree ? 

I ’m the head Constable. Bring ’em to me ! ” 

But where was the head constable? Where was 
CEdipus ? 

I, with a disquiet in my own experience that an- 
swered to this outward surging, looked on ; watching 
if any help might come of it to me. 


SAETOR EESAETUS. 


301 


Two days later, there was an afternoon reading at 
the house. Aunt Ildy went upstairs and took a nap. 
Hope and I got into a corner. 

Everybody looked very wise and strong. It was the 
look beforehand, like the Schiller on the reading-stand. 
They seemed so certain of what they were coming to ; 
at least, that they were surely coming to something. 

I, doubting so painfully what I was coming to, — 
or if to anything, — questioning so of life, that with 
me had got into a hard knot at the very outset of the 
unwinding, — questioned also of all that came in my 
way ; if haply any sign might direct me right ; if I 
might catch any loop of hope or clearness, through 
which my thread might run smooth again into my 
hand. 

I wondered if they brought any word of fate to me, 
— these seekers ; these repeaters after greater seekers ; 
these passers-on of telegraphic meanings and solemn 
watchwords. 

I was half vexed with Hope, quietly busy with her 
netting of a cake-napkin for Aunt Ildy, apparently 
untouched with any momentousness or expectation; 
forgetful that “such drawing-room was simply a sec- 
tion of infinite space, where so many God-created souls 
did for the time meet together.” Clothed she was, 
comfortably; in her contented everyday life; in the 
simple outward that was given her; in no haste to 
strip her being down to the mysterious, naked Me of 
the metaphysics. Clothed, and in her right mind, I 
wonder, as God meant her to be ? Not denuded, cut- 
ting herself with stones, driven by the legion ? 

I thought of this afterward ; I think of it now, when 
I can look back and remember how the Lord held her 
then and always, safely and tenderly, at his feet. 

I had got hold of “ Sartor Resartus ” since I had 
been here ; its strong, bold sentences had taken a grasp 


302 


HITHEETO. 


of me ; I thought I found there things I had not known 
before. 

What signified the shifting relations of neighbor 
atoms if we were indeed but atoms in the All ? Could 
I be content with that? Could I be a part of the 
great shining, — the universal joy? Was this self- 
losing ? The divine end ? 

Out of some individual restlessness must always come 
this grasping forth into the vague, this flinging back 
of life into the impersonal. I think I know better 
now; that “we would not be unclothed, but clothed 
upon,” when most “in this tabernacle we do groan, 
being burdened; ” that each living-out of God’s mean- 
ing is a piece of his own beauty, and a personal bless- 
edness, laid up for each from the beginning; that so 
only we go back into his glory; that it was so Jesus 
gave his flesh, his mortal living and embodiment, for 
the life of the world. That we must wear the raiment 
He puts upon us, with simple believing, till He 
changes it for the white robe of an eternal purity and 
peace. 

To-day I was eager, feverish ; I laid a mental clutch 
upon every word ; I wanted all at once to come into 
my inheritance. There are other prodigals than they 
who demand their patrimony to squander in riotous 
outward living. 

They brought in treasures like the Forty Thieves ; 
each had found something rich or sparkling; there was 
much reading, much talking over what was read ; much 
rejoicing over great words. Sesames of absolute truth ; 
after all, they went away, leaving me confused and 
hungry, like one who wakes from a dream of sumptu- 
ous food. 

I carried the “Tailor Sewed Over ” upstairs with 
me that night. I wanted to make Hope talk about it. 

I sat reading while she brushed her long, bright hair. 


SARTOB BESABTUS. 


303 


I had just let mine down, and left it so. It was dif- 
ferent from hers, as the working of the brain beneath 
it; capable of catching a gleam in the quick light, 
but in the shadow dusky, neutral, dun-colored. Hers 
shone from itself. I pushed my hands up among the 
fallen locks against my temples, and leaned so over 
the book. 

“It’s just what you say yourself,” I broke out, 
presently, to Hope, without preface, and without lift- 
ing my eyes. 

I spoke as if she had disputed something. I felt in 
my mind, magnetically, the feeling of hers; that she 
was wistful of my occupation, — wistful also of a bet- 
ter, fuller help for me. I knew she understood, with 
her strange intuition, having hardly looked into any 
philosophy, that no philosophy would answer me. 

I read from the page before me : — 

All visible things are emblems. Matter exists 
only spiritually, to represent some idea, and body it 
forth.’ You’re always saying it, Hope. You say 
‘It ’s all true, somehow; everything means something; 
you can’t see what there isn’t; there’s an inside 
world.’ Why don’t you like this? ” 

“I don’t know it much; but it seems to stop,” said 
Hope. “It ’s the dijfference between a word in a dic- 
tionary, or a sentence in a grammar, and a word spoken 
by somebody right to me. It may be a very beautiful 
word ; the sentence may have the parts of speech all 
right, ready for parsing; but it ’s spelling and parsing, 
after all ; what the words were really meant for was 
to speak with. I want to be spoken to ; and so do you, 
Anstiss. I think they are so busy parsing, that they 
forget to listen. Their bright thinking makes me feel 
cold,” she went on after a pause, “and the hard work 
of it tires me. It is like the fishermen toiling all 
night and catching nothing, till the Lord came, in the 


304 


HITHERTO. 


morning, and told them where to cast their nets, and 
gave them what they wanted. I have to come back to 
this, to get warmed and rested, always.” 

And Hope sat down in the chair opposite mine, 

, and took into her hands her Bible from the little book- 
, table. 

' “Wait a minute,” she began again, as I turned 
back to my Carlyle. “See how live this is, after 
that. And if it had n’t been for this, is it likely, I 
wonder, that that man would ever have got at the 
other ? ” 

So she read the beginning of the Gospel according 
to St. John. Those wonderful eighteen verses that 
are the spiritual epic of creation and redemption. 

“God spoke from the beginning; and his speech 
was himself. All things are his words and his mean- 
ings, and without them was not anything made. In 
this word of love are the life and the light of men; 
but it shone in darkness that understood it not. 
There were men sent to bear witness. John came. 
He was not that Light ; he was not all God had to 
say; no man is; he only saw, and interpreted. The 
true Light lighteth every man. Each may have a lit- 
tle; may be a letter of the word. Yet the world 
knew it not. Even his own received Him not, know- 
ing it to be He. Therefore came the Word, at last, 
once for all, in the flesh; this whole thought of God 
in and for his world, that was himself, — in a human 
life, and dwelt among us; it touched us with grace 
and truth; it translated to us the hidden glory of the 
Father. No man hath seen God at any time; this 
only begotten, which is in his own bosom, hath de- 
clared Him.” 

That was the fresh, live meaning that ran through 
the old, worn words, as she read them over; some- 
thing of that she made me feel, then, in her feeling 


SARTOR RESARTUS. 


305 


of them. It was in her voice, her emphasis, her 
pauses. The soul of the sublime language was in her 
eyes, and lightened upon me. But I felt as if I could 
not have got it for myself. 

“Somebody must always help me, Hope,” I said; 
“you, or Emerson, or Carlyle. I must get it where I 
can.” 

I thought, as I spoke, of Red Hill, and the inter- 
pretation I had waited years for, and that Grandon 
Cope had given me. Of how he quickened me with 
his own insight, till I, too, could see; till I could, 
also, count the stones in the wall of the New Jerusa- 
lem. I had been near beholding the glory, and living 
in the light of it. I had told Richard, then, as if 
I knew, how all creation was a “talk.” I had been 
impatient with him because he did not see what I 
thought I saw. It came back to me now, with a 
meaning that I had not known myself. 

Since, — and such a little since, — the cloud of my 
life had shut in the shining; my mistakes had bewil- 
dered me, and sent me astray ; I could not distinguish 
the voices ; pain and reproach assailed me ; there was 
only a cry in my own heart ; the world about me had 
grown dumb again. 

“I donH believe it comes with much looking for, 
or with telling back and forth, as some of these peo- 
ple seem to think. It is n’t ‘with observation.^ The 
Lord himself gives it ‘within us.’ ” So Hope said. 

Up and down the page of the hook I held, my eye 
still ran, mechanically ; and still the words read like 
great words ; why were they not worth while ? Who 
knew that they might not have been “given ” also? 

“I do not say,” said Hope, to my demand of this. 
“It only seems to me as if they climbed up their own 
way into the sheepfold, when all the time the Door is 
open. As if they tried to begin again, and do it 


306 


HITHERTO. 


themselves. And that is the losing and the hard 
work. ” 

“See here,” I said, hardly noticing her word. 
“‘If you consider it, what is man himself, and his 
whole terrestrial life, but an emblem; a clothing, or 
visible garment for that divine Me of his, cast hither, 
like a light-particle, down from heaven?’ ” 

“Still it is only like parsing. Can he tell us what 
to do with the Me, when we have found that it is 
there ? Or what shall ever become of it ? It is the 
Me that puzzles us.” 

“ Has anybody %/i-puzzled us ? ” 

“Certain, Anstiss.” Tender, and reverent, hurt 
gently with my assumed doubt, was Hope’s utterance 
of this peculiar word of hers. “‘The life is more 
than meat, and the body is more than raiment.’ He 
did not leave us to wait for Mr. Carlyle to say that. 
But we must wait for Him to say, ‘Yet the very hairs 
of your head are all numbered.’ ‘Consider the ra- 
vens; consider the lilies; how God clothes and feeds 
them — and you. Ye are not able to do the thing 
that is least; why are ye troubled about the rest? 
Fear not, little flock; it is your Father^ s good plea- 
sure to give you the kingdom ! ’ ” 

Carlyle’s “All ” was not like this. Nor the cloth- 
ing of his light-particles. Still, neither is chemistry 
the law of love ; yet these things are analogous ; they 
help. They had a charm for me ; they illustrated in- 
effable things. I remembered the old thrill of my 
school-days, when I learned of the inter-penetration of 
the gases, and straightway saw its spiritual meaning. 

Hope rested me; reminded and reassured me; yet 
I could not see why she could not welcome these things 
also. They were so like herself in much ; they put in 
grander words so many things that she said simply. 

I know, now, the difference; the difference that 


SARTOR RESARTUS. 


307 


made her shrink. Out of her simple faith — her re- 
ceiving the kingdom of heaven as a little child — grew 
her living thought, the gift of the loving Spirit; she 
was afraid of cold thinking that should try to replace 
faith. She was afraid of anything that seemed to 
“find itself out; ” that could not see how it was “all 
there, beforehand,” in the perfect word that teaches 
all things and saves to the uttermost. 

By and by, this “ all and more ” that she kept 
bringing from the heavenly treasure, laying it in a 
reverent exultation beside whatever riches of human 
philosophy were offered her, should come back to me 
with something of her own glad satisfying; by and 
by, long after, when I needed it most ; hut now I was 
eager to prove to her; to make her acknowledge. 

“ He brings it round to just where you do ! ” I 
cried. “He says your very words. He proves it out 
of materialism itself. ‘What make you of your No- 
thing can act but where it is ? ’ It is about Red and 
Blue, — Judge and Criminal. See ! — ‘ Red says to 
Blue, Be hanged and anatomized. Blue hears with a 
shudder, and oh, wonder of wonders! marches sor- 
rowfully to the gallows, is there noosed up, and the 
surgeons dissect him. How is this, or what make you 
of your Nothing can act but where it is ? Red has no 
physical hold of Blue ; no clutch of him ; neither are 
those ministering sheriffs and hangmen and tipstaves 
so related to commanding Red that he can tug them 
hither and thither; hut each stands distinct within his 
own skin. Nevertheless, as it is spoken, so it is done. 
Thinking reader, the reason seems to me twofold: 
First, Man is a Spirit, and hound by invisible cords 
to all men. ’ ” 

“Why! Why! ” cried Hope, in a kind of breath- 
less fullness, her face all alive with something that was 
almost fun, only that her eyes glowed so with her in- 


308 


HITHERTO. 


tense enthusiasm, “what a while he was in coming to it ! 
The centurion could have helped him long ago ! ‘ I say 

to this man. Go, and he goeth; and to another, Come, 
and he cometh; and to my servant. Do this, and he 
doeth it. Speak the word, Lord, and my servant 
shall be healed!’ They cannot go outside what has 
been given; it holds the whole. The Lord’s life put 
it all into the world. The kingdom came; and the 
kings of the earth may ‘bring their glory and honor 
into it; ’ hut that is all that they can do. The same 
things come here and there; that shows how He has 
made us all one; hut they are his ; He ‘gave his flesh,’ 
his bodily living of all truth, for this life of the world 
that is in it now. He said the flesh was nothing; the 
word he spoke was the Spirit and the life. Why cardt 
they see how it was all in Him ? They part his rai- 
ment, while they crucify him! Who else says live 
things, and then tells us. Come unto me, and I will 
give you more, — all. I am the bread of life that 
came down from heaven ? ” 

Hope burned and quickened as she went on; she 
spoke the thought as it came to her; it grew as she 
spoke it; it led her whither she had not even seen 
when she began; into a great, new gladness. Every 
clause was an outburst of joy. 

She would not have spoken so downstairs, to all 
those people; and yet, — I don’t know, — if it had 
come to her then, perhaps she could not even then 
have helped it. 

It seemed to me, sometimes, that Hope Devine was 
inspired. 

After that we quieted down, and went to bed. 

The candle was out; Hope lay utterly still; her 
sweet breath came softly against my cheek with such 
gentle and regular impulse, that I thought she had 
already fallen asleep. When, all at once, out of her 


SAETOB EESAETUS. 309 

repose, she spoke once more, — the issue of her mus- 
ing that had still gone on, after our last words. 

Nothing can act but where it is.’ It ’s true, — 
turned round. Nothing can but be where it acts. It ’s 
there, too, with all the rest. It ’s true when we 
dream, and when we think, and — when we pray. 
The angel of the Lord came with his messages. We 
say ‘ Our Father who art in heaven, ’ because when we 
shut our eyes, we ’re there. The Lord could not love 
his disciples without being ‘with them always.’ And 
that ’s why the little children’s angels — Oh, how 
beautiful it is, Anstiss, and how much there is of it ! ” 
“You speak so quick and so sure, Hope! And how 
it all flies together in your mind, from Genesis to Rev- 
elation ! Did you ever think it all out before ? ” 

“No,” said Hope instantly; “not so. I ’ve just — 
noticed it ; ” and while she hesitated, and then fixed 
on her quaint, accustomed word, I knew in the dark- 
ness how she smiled, and what the look of vision was 
upon her face. “But it ’s true. It ’s there. I see 
it — clear. ” 


CHAPTER XX. 


AESTHETIC TEA. 

“Verloren! verloren! ” cried Harriet Holgate, 
coming in, and subsiding into the only chair in the 
place. 

We were busy in the pantry, or china closet, a small 
square room adjoining the back parlor; in one corner 
of the latter a table was spread with exquisite fresh 
linen and silver tea-things. 

Corinna was standing on a high stool, reaching down 
best cups, and saucers, and plates of India porcelain 
from an upper shelf; Hope and I, with fine glass- 
towels, were receiving and dusting. 

“What’s lost?” answered Corinna impatiently. 
“Your gloves, or your heart, or your wits, — besides 
your time? And why don’t you speak English? ” 

“Because I am cultivating German, and it ’s my 
duty to impress it on my mind by using it on all im- 
pressive occasions. Don’t be cross, Krin; at least till 
I say Now! I haven’t got through. When I have, 
we ’ll all be cross together.” 

“Are we to wait for you to get it all into German? ” 

“No, indeed. It would be. too full of idiots. 
You ’d better come down, before I fire.” 

“ Fire away, ” retorted Krin, not a bit aesthetically, 
or apprehensively ; and drawing a pile of precious por- 
celain into her hands at their utmost reach, as if in 
defiance. *' 

“Well, then, the big man isn’t coming. That’s 
one verloren. And the other is, — it ’s more than half 
of no use if he did. He ’s engaged to be married; up 


ESTHETIC TEA. 311 

there in the country. The Growe girls have just told 
me. Now! ” 

Corinna gave me the plates, cautiously, and then 
dropped deliberately and gradually down, and sat upon 
the stool. 

“Well, that ’s nice! ” 

She put her feet upon a rung, and her elbows on her 
knees, and her chin into her hands ; and looked down 
at us with her cheeks wrinkled up under her eyes. 

“ can’t he come? The rest of it’s rubbish, 
you know. After to-night, who cares ? But what is 
he spoiling our tea for ? ” 

“Don’t know. The Upfolds counted on his stay- 
ing, for our tea, and for the class to-morrow. But 
he’s gone; and — what’s the transcendental for an 
upset apple-cart, or — fat in the fire ? ” 

Harriet looked so pretty, and so funny, and spoke 
in such sudden small type, that the words failed of 
their vulgarity. 

“On the whole, I believe I ’m rather afraid of 
him,” said Corinna with resignation. “He’d have 
found out everything one isn’t up to — yet.” 

“On the whole, the grapes are sour,” responded 
Harriet. 

“Girls, girls! What are you sitting round doing 
nothing for? What ’s the matter? Isn’t that china 
dusted yet ? ” 

“Mother!” cried Corinna, “what do you think? 
The Upfolds’ friend — that Mr. Cope, the ‘North 
American Review ’ man — is n’t coming. He ’s 
gone.” 

The last plate, that I was just placing on the pile, 
did not drop as things do in story-books, when people 
are taken by surprise. On the contrary, my fingers 
contracted themselves so tightly upon it, that they 
might almost have pinched a piece out. 


312 


HITHERTO. 


It had been so near as this ! What should I have 
done? 

I just stood there holding the plate. 

“I haven’t had time to read his piece,” said Mrs. 
Holgate, with an echo of her daughter’s submission. 
The girls could not break her of all her old-fashioned 
words. She never remembered to say “article.” 

“But there! I can’t let my cake burn if he isn’t. 
I came for a straw from that new broom. Pull me 
one out, Harriet. A couple.” 

“Mother doesn’t care two straws,” said Harriet 
indolently, handing them across. 

“Straws show which way the wind blows. Right 
through the cooking range, to-day. No draught any- 
where else,” said Corinna, laughing. 

“Cake is cake,” said Mrs. Holgate. 

“I don’t believe it is,” said Hope merrily. “I 
guess it ’s only an idea, suggested by particles of sugar 
and starch — and sulphur, and the rest of the egg and 
butter chemicals.” 

Mrs. Holgate took the straws, and hurried away 
with them, downstairs. 

She was suffering a lamentable relapse into house- 
wifery and commonplace. All her pre-Carlylean in- 
stincts were aroused in her by the demand upon her 
purely practical skill, which was also her natural de- 
light. She and Aunt Ildy were kitchened together all 
the forenoon, over wonderful preparations of muffins 
and lemon pound-cake. They only had two things, at 
these teas, beside the tea; but those two things, here, 
were to be things in their way such as High Culture 
had never elsewhere put her lips to. 

The gods do not despise ambrosia; only, they eat it 
in a divine abstraction. 

I remember, amid all the other remembrances of 
that evening, how fast the tender muffiuis ceased to be, 


ESTHETIC TEA. 313 

and how the melting richness of the lemon cake was 
dissolved away. 

I have no recollection of how that plate ever got out 
of my hand. I think Hope must have taken it. She 
always did, quietly, what other people had not the 
sense to do for themselves. 

When the dinner was over, and the last touches 
were given to the rooms below, we went upstairs to 
rest a while, and then to dress. Aunt Ildy was to have 
her usual nap. Hope and I took books, and lay down 
on bed and sofa, in our room. Now and then we 
spoke, but did not sleep. 

I was thinking of those things downstairs. How 
much was true and how much was put on ? 

We do not live in fairy-land, to be sure; things will 
not do themselves; life doesn’t literally flower, nor 
being blossom; there are processes. 

It takes all day if you are going to have a tea, as 
the Holgates had it; somebody’s all day; your ser- 
vants’, if you are rich enough; otherwise your own. 

When the time comes, then it all blooms; then 
friends come graciously and easily in, upon your grace 
and ease, and your life is at its perfect and harmonious 
point; the aspect stands for what always is; the tone 
of the moment for that which runs through the days. 

Nobody knows about the broom-straws, when the 
golden-delicate cake comes around; nobody thinks of 
the special china dusting; nobody asks any more, if 
that page has been really just now read, at which J ean 
Paul, replacing Schiller, lies open on the reading- 
stand, pushed carelessly into a secluded corner. No- 
body knows that the prints from Michael Angelo were 
borrowed by Harriet this morning; that though she 
will keep, and thoroughly enjoy them, for days to come, 
it had been a special object to have them here to-night, 
and as yet they have been barely looked at. 


314 


HITHERTO. 


Many things are everyday and everywhere, now, 
like silver forks, that did not use to be ; but there is a 
time, with all refinements, before everyday ; a time of 
representatives and occasions. 

The portfolio was on the pier-table; the freshest 
music was scattered on the open piano ; the new re- 
views had had their leaves carefully cut, — that was 
the last thing Mrs. Holgate did, when she was too tired 
to do anything else, before she changed her morning- 
gown; Aunt Ildy looking on with her severely practi- 
cal nose very much in the air. All had been “seen 
to,” as sedulously as the tea furnishings on the cool, 
white-draped table, the fresh flowers in the vases, and 
the polishing of the needless fire-irons. 

It expressed their tastes, or it could not have been 
there; it told truly of the occupations and the culture 
they chose and aimed at ; it was so far honest ; but it 
was just as much a “setting out ” as the rural dame’s 
whose whole glory is in her bountiful cheer, — her 
seven kinds of unapproachable cake, and four of mirac- 
ulous preserves. 

What did it amount to, beyond the setting-out and 
the clearing-up? 

The talk, the ideas, would be just the same; a 
bringing forth of best things for company. Would the 
best things be any better, or more, for that ? Might 
not something get hopelessly soiled, or shattered even, 
as the precious porcelains and silken garments do, now 
and again? 

What did anything amount to; the honestest and 
simplest living; the doing of daily tasks for duty’s 
sake? Only a living; making up one’s bed to tumble 
again ; cooking, to eat and be hungry, and cook again ; 
wanting, getting, losing; beginning over and over; do 
we really get on at all ? 

“ Do you like your life, Hope ? ” I asked suddenly. 


JSSTHETIC TEA. 315 

“I’m interested in it,” said Hope. “I’d rather 
finish it than begin any other.” 

“As if it were a book to be read! ” 

“Certain; just as if; but not only; you asked as 
if, Anstiss.” 

“But a book,” I answered, “you know, is all be- 
tween the covers; something must come of it before 
you get through.” 

“Certain,” she said again; “people couldn’t make 
the books so, if the real thing was n’t; it is all be- 
tween the covers.” 

“Perhaps; but the all of some books isn’t much 
worth while. You wait, and wait, and expect, and 
finally it shuts up and hasn’t told anything. It’s 
hard work to read some books, Hope.” 

“Never mind the books, then, any more. I dare 
say some ain’t made right; but the real thing is, you 
see; talk about that. Don’t you often, when you are 
watching and hoping for anything, take a kind of clear 
comfort the longer you wait ? Because then it seems 
as if it must come soon.” 

“H-m! I don’t know! I think it makes my throat 
feel dusty.” 

“And then water is so good to drink. That ’s like 
what Mrs. Whistler used to say. She used to know 
when good things were coming. Her mouth was made 
up for them so.” 

“We may make up our mouths all our lives long, I 
guess, for some things ; and go out of the world with 
them made up.” 

“Certain.” 

“What do you keep saying ‘certain ’ for, Hope? ” I 
asked crossly. “That ’s three times.” 

“Is it? Well, it’s true, every time.” Hope 
laughed, with absolute good-humor. “And nothing ’s 
certainer than the last one. I think this world is 


316 


HITHERTO. 


just for us to make up our mouths in. And after 
that comes the blessedness, — for those that have 
found out what to hunger and thirst for.” 

It was a very pleasant tea-drinking, indeed. 

We were now in early September. The evenings 
were softly cool. Of those who had left their city 
homes awhile, for the fields or the sea-beach, many 
had returned. Up and down the street in which the 
Holgates lived were bits of gardens at the backs of all 
the houses, and balconies ran along the drawing-room 
stories, upon which long windows were thrown open, 
and there people came out to sit under the little patch 
of starlit heaven that darkled and shone above from 
roof to roof across between these and the other oppo- 
site blocks whose gardens ran down to the same paved 
lane. 

There were vines, lifting their great, green, cluster- 
ing leaves and tossing their light tendrils in the even- 
ing wind ; there were deep horse-chestnut trees rear- 
ing their billows of verdure, and there was the smell 
of many flowers. A suggestion of the country; an 
outbreathing of the same sweet grace from the true- 
hearted earth, unspoiled beneath the crush and burden 
of a city, that the wide fields gave out of their un- 
smothered life. 

Inside, the rooms were bright; pouring their light 
out through muslin draperies into the vines and tree- 
tops. There was the fragrance of delicious tea, that 
somehow is especially fragrant in summer warmth, 
and coming forth in little whiffs upon sweet outer air. 

People took this little evening comfort in the city 
then; and there was a gentle, social feeling of the rest 
and refreshing at the day’s end, and everybody’s bits 
of green and blossom helped everybody’s else, and the 
bright, open windows were like pleasant watchfires tel- 
egraphing back and forth from household to household. 


.ESTHETIC TEA. 


317 

Now, from May to November there are long ranges of 
closed shutters and cobwebbed railings; the gardens 
are only disused clothes-yards, and strange cats walk 
about the balconies in the darkness. 

I liked this glimpse of city life with its country 
flavor. There was something delicate in it that you 
get in anything homoeopathically taken, which, quaffed 
freely, loses some mysterious power or charm. It was 
like a sip of rare wine. 

Hope and I sat outside; the Miss Growes came, 
too, and a young Mr. Upfold who accompanied his 
sisters to these gatherings, taking the sociality without 
the metaphysics. 

“They always did like the crust of the biscuit best, 
and I could n’t bear it; so they gave me all the soft,” 
said he. “It ’s my perquisite.” 

He made us very comfortable with a tea-poy, and 
went to and fro, bringing fresh-filled cups, sugar, 
cream, and cakes. 

“How still it is! ” said Hope; “almost like Broad- 
fields ; and yet, what houses and houses full of people, 
crowded together! I think it is a strange feeling to 
live in a great city. All walls, and walls; built to 
shut up lives. Nobody knows what is close by. It 
makes me think ” — Hope stopped. 

“Well, Miss Devine, of what does it make you 
think ? ” asked young Upfold. He had just brought 
her the sugar-bowl, and Hope had forgotten she wanted 
it. 

“Are you going to have thoughts, too? It is a 
terrible way people have got into lately ; it reminds 
me, sometimes, of my little niece asking about her 
soul. She had a notion it was a kind of an oval- 
shaped thing, lying across inside her bosom ; and she 
wondered what it would walk about on when it got to 
heaven. I think we are all getting to be pure ideas. 


318 


HITHERTO. 


and the wonder is what we shall walk about on; or if 
we do, how we shall look. That was what puzzled 
Rosie; she thought legs would be so funny. But I 
should really like to know what you thought of ; you 
look as if it were something that came; not a bullet 
that you had run carefully beforehand, and were wait- 
ing for a chance to fire off. They all carry such lots 
of ammunition. Miss Hope! ” 

“I don’t,” said Hope, laughing. “Not a single 
cartridge. And I shouldn’t know how to load and 
fire, if I did.” 

“‘It made you think,’ — I do hope you’ll tell 
me!” 

I dare say Mr. Upfold fancied he had struck a vein 
that would last awhile; that he was fairly started on 
a half-hour’s bantering small-talk, such as most girls 
would have been ready for, and made much of ; a be- 
seeching and withholding of something just enough, or 
little enough, worth while to serve the pretense; as 
children play “button, button.” 

I think he was very much surprised when Hope lifted 
up her golden-brown eyes upon him, the smile subduing 
softly on her face, and said simply, — 

“It made me think — of the many mansions.” 

“I believe it did,” he answered at once, quietly, 
and with a deference ; paying tribute, in words as sim- 
ple as her own, to her reality. “Will you tell me 
how ? ” 

“So near,” she said; “and yet we know so little. 
But it is a comfort they are there ; and we can see the 
light.” 

“ Do you always think such things as that ? ” 

“I think a great many little beginnings. So does 
everybody, I suppose. Everything is like something 
else, and puts us in mind, you know.” 

“ I am afraid you ought to think of your cup of tea. 


ESTHETIC TEA. 319 

just now ; or will you let me get a hot one ? And you 
haven’t had a bit of cake, — have you? ” 

He spoke as if he would like to do a little service 
for her. Perhaps something so like angelhood gleamed 
out upon him, that he would like to bring her food 
and drink, and prove her mortal. 

“Oh, no, indeed!” said Hope. “I mean — the 
tea — it is quite nice. But I would like a little more 
cake, presently, if you please.” 

I wondered at Hope’s charming little easy way. 
She had never been in a company like this ; yet she 
was so at home ! But I need not have wondered. She 
was too simple to be anything hut easy. “Such draw- 
ing-room ” was “ simply a section of infinite space, ” 
after all ; and in no essential way different to her from 
Mrs. Hathaway’s best parlor, or the fern-pastures 
about Red Hill. 

After ^e had done drinking tea and eating cakes, 
we stood about, and just within, the windows, looking 
at the company and catching, from the nearer groups, 
the tone of conversation. The Miss Growes went to 
the table to look at the prints. Harriet was turning 
them over, and talking rather learnedly about them. 

Mr. Upfold asked us if we would like to see. 

“I don’t know anything at all about them,” an- 
swered Hope; “and I don’t believe I should find out 
enough to enjoy them, looking at them in this way. 
I should like to have them all by myself, or with some- 
body who could explain them. I shall try and ask 
Miss Harriet to-morrow; for I should like to under- 
stand.” 

“I wonder if there is another girl in this room, that 
would give an honest answer like that ! ” exclaimed 
Mr. Upfold. 

“Oh, they all know; or have had some chance to 
know,” said Hope. “I never saw anything of the 


320 


HITHERTO. 


kind before; and I haven’t read about Michael An- 
gelo. But I mean to, now. Everything does n’t 
come all at once, to anybody.” 

It was funny to watch young Upfold’s face. Every 
time Hope opened her lips, she said something which 
called out that mingled expression, through slightly 
lifted brows, mouth playing with half-checked smiles, 
and bright, quick flashes from the eyes, which told of 
surprise, amused appreciation of her exquisite fresh- 
ness, and an unfeigned pleasure and admiration. 

Once he turned round to me. 

“I wish I could get her out there in the middle of 
the room among them all, and make her talk,” said 
he. “It would startle them like a little sun-shower.” 

“ It would be like the little child set in the midst, ” 
said I. 

“Tell me honestly. Don’t you think they pretend 
awfully ? ” ^ 

“Your sisters ! Our hostesses ! All their friends ! ” 

“Well, you canH say, to be sure. But I should 
like to get at what she makes out of it. Miss Devine! 
what do you think of all this fine talk ? Do you be- 
lieve they ’ve got so far as io Hhink French’? Do 
you suppose they breathe transcendentally ? Or is it 
all practice and best gowns ? ” 

Hope glanced about upon the groups, with not a bit 
either of presumptuous judgment or sarcasm, any more 
than of timid over- impression, in her manner. 

“I suppose it is all real,” she said; “or they would 
not take the trouble. But — I don’t know, — it 
seems, — does n’t it ? — a little bit — as if they were 
looking in the glass all the time. Like trying on 
things, — some of it.” 

Mr. Upfold’s laugh broke suddenly upon the low, 
uniform key of conversation around the room, and 
heads were turned toward us. 


ESTHETIC TEA. 321 

He wheeled slightly and easily, giving his back to 
the company, and his merry face to us. 

“Capital! ” said he, with a subdued emphasis. 
“New phraseology, a too ‘objective subjectivity.’ I 
haven’t got to thinking in it yet, Miss Devine; mais 
je le parle assez pour ne me faire comprendre.” 

“Thank you, Mr. Upfold, ” replied Hope demurely. 
“ Which is the French ? ” 

He laughed out again. 

“Don’t, Miss Hope! ” he cried. “They ’ll find you 
out and get you away. The forty she -bears will come 
out of the wood and carry off the two naughty children. 
1 want to be naughty and happy a little while longer.” 

— “After all, Mrs. Holgate! I and my lion! 
Quite tame and amenable ! ” 

“Amenable to good fortune, Mrs. Holgate. I was 
detained in town this morning, and this afternoon a 
letter came, which did away with the necessity for 
my leaving, and, in fact, obliged me to remain . My 
friend, whom it was needful for me to see, will himself 
be in the city to-morrow.” 

These last sentences, in two voices, came to me dis- 
tinctly across what Hope and Mr. Upfold were saying 
at the same moment. They were spoken beyond the 
folding-doors, at the entrance to the further parlor, 
near which Mrs. Holgate stood. 

Grandon Cope and the eldest Miss Upfold had just 
come in together. 

There was a buzz in my head then, for a second, and 
the room and all I saw in it gave a queer little jerk 
across my eyes, and while it cleared and straightened 
again as instantly, I saw that Mr. Cope had gone 
across the front parlor, right up to Aunt Ildy. She, 
with a very great amazement in her face, was making, 
as to the rest of her, a deliberate, complete, old fash- 
ioned, New Oxford courtesy. 


322 


HITHERTO. 


The groups broke up, with the interruption and the 
fresh attraction. People waited to he introduced. 
Mrs. Holgate fidgeted a little at his occupation with 
Aunt Ildy. He seemed, indeed, in no manner of 
hurry; hut went on asking, apparently, a great many 
little questions, which Miss Chism replied to with her 
properest manner, somewhat stiff and unused, her chin 
drawn back with a decorous dignity ; smoothing care- 
fully, as she spoke, the fingers of her right glove with 
those of her left hand, in which she held, exactly hy 
the middle, her best pocket-handkerchief. She never 
looked at me. 

Presently, Corinna Holgate came and took Mr. 
Upfold away. Another gentleman, old Mr. Growe, 
joined them as they paused by a table in the front 
room near where Aunt Ildy stood, on which was a tall, 
slender-stemmed vase of clear glass, holding a single 
lily-like blossom of some rare plant. They stood ad- 
miring the flower for a minute, and then Corinna dex- 
terously turned and introduced both her companions to 
Miss Chism. . 

It made Aunt Ildy quite preeminent for the time 
being. Mr. Cope did not immediately come away; 
and she stood surrounded, like any young, brilliant 
woman, with the best masculine attention of the room. 
It had its effect, as a single such moment will have 
with a woman who only gets a moment of it, let her age 
be what it may. I detected the pleased “objective” 
in her; in her sober, old-fashioned properness, with a 
decided access of best behavior, she was trying it on. 

She alluded to it afterward. It was the point for 
her approval, in an evening in which she had found 
much to dispraise. 

“It was very pretty and attentive of Corinna; and 
Mr. Cope was particularly polite. You can always 
tell a gentleman by his manners to elderly ladies.” 


ESTHETIC TEA. 


323 


From Aunt Ildy, he came at once to me. She had 
been obliged, I know, to reply in the affirmative to his 
inquiry if I were with her, though she carefully re- 
frained from any glance in my direction; much as 
children do, when they are playing at “hide a thing,” 
and are telling “how high water.” 

There was only time for a mere greeting ; only time 
for the room to give that odd jerk again before my 
vision as he approached, and then for me to answer 
properly and quietly his salutation, and to put my 
hand in his for an instant as he offered it; for him to 
say he had had no idea that it was here we were stay- 
ing, — that it was a great surprise to meet us ; to tell 
him “Yes, — I liked Boston very much indeed;” 
that “it was not quite certain yet how soon we should 
return to New Oxford; ” to ask, rather suddenly, “if 
Miss Hare were well, and the family at South Side ; ” 
and then they came and got him away. 

They divided him round; introducing him to one 
and another; everybody expected something wonderful 
from him ; and almost everybody, I suppose, was ready 
with something as nearly wonderful as possible to say 
to him. 

But the wonderful thing he did was to stick loyally 
to commonplace; he seemed determined not to be 
deep or grand; he broke up all congested talk; he 
stirred the company to simple, genial circulation. 

He told funny things; he talked railroads with old 
Mr. Growe, and just when that was getting to be long 
and monopolizing, he broke it off, and made him 
laugh most untranscendentally and unspeculatively at 
a story of a countryman, unweaned from stage-travel- 
ing, beside whom he had been seated in the train, 
coming down, and who, after many extraordinary pri- 
vate inquiries of himself, had lifted up his voice sud- 
denly, and hailed the conductor at the further end of 


324 


HITHERTO. 


the car with, “ I say, driver ! look here ! where does 
this — team — dine ? ” 

“There is nobody,” remarked Grandon Cope, 
“more intensely green than a Yankee, when things are 
new; precisely because his faculties all waken so 
alertly to a surprise; therefore, also, he accustoms 
himself with a corresponding quickness to the new con- 
ditions ; they are old to him, when the first astonish- 
ment is over; next week that man will he putting to 
practical advantage the facility he has just fairly real- 
ized ; next year he will he planting crops and raising 
stock with reference to the railroad market; and in 
five years he will be one of a corporation, perhaps, 
petitioning for new charters, and buying lands along 
the routes. Nothing throws the Yankee really off his 
balance. If the earth’s axis were to shift suddenly, 
he would suffer the convulsion with a certain cat-like, 
wide-awake- and- watchful sjDread of every astonished 
capacity, all abroad for the transition interval, but com- 
ing down on his feet, and ‘ located ’ in the best prospec- 
tive latitude before the earthquakes were well over.” 

Presently, after getting away from Mr. Growe, and 
leaving the laugh yet broad upon his face, he was no- 
ticing with admiration a bouquet of brilliant flowers 
in which the vivid coloring of autumn was mingled 
with the lingering delicateness of summer hues, and 
asking Harriet Holgate if she had ever seen a piano 
kaleidoscope. Then all the carefully scattered music 
was hastily slid together, and dropped into the can- 
terbury; the lid was raised, the lamp placed, and 
he showed us the effect, — wreaths, crowns, stars, 
masses, shifting and glowing in marvelous reflection, 
from the vase of bright blossoms, as he held it, and 
moved it slightly and gently in the full intensity of 
the light. 

It was while they were still busy with this that, 


ESTHETIC TEA. 


325 

resigning the flowers to Mr. Upfold, he went first to 
the other end of the instrument and took his own turn 
of observation, and then moved quietly round and 
came over again to Hope and me. 

“Have you got all your questions answered, Miss 
Anstiss?” he asked. “Have they solved every- 
thing? ” 

“Here!” 

“Why, isn’t this the place? I thought Boston 
was the Key, at the end of the book of the genera- 
tions, where all the riddles were unraveled.” 

“Into new conundrums? ” 

I answered him in his own way; but why did he 
take that way with me ? 

Did he not know? Had not Augusta told him? 
Was there not a displeasure in his heart as there was 
a self-reproach in mine ? What was the use of talk- 
ing outside the truth that was between us ? Why did 
he not rather keep away ? 

While I stood before him, with my face down, 
knowing his bent upon me, thinking these things, — 
showing them, perhaps, — his face changed; I saw it 
when I lifted up my eyes again at his next words, 
that were different also. 

“Yes. You will find out that.” 

“That it is all puzzle, and that there is no way 
out ? ” 

“No. But that theory and introspection will not 
help you out. It is only living that unravels.” 

“Hope would say, — the door isn’t through the 
looking-glass.” 

“ Hope would say quite true, ” he answered with a 
smile, and a quick glance at her that had a question in 
it. “You would only shatter your ideal, and wound 
yourself. But how came you. Miss Hope, to say 
that, and what — if you please — is the rest of it ? ” 


326 


HITHERTO. 


“Mr. Upfold said it was objective subjectivity,” 
said Hope mischievously. 

“Hope thought,” said I, “that people were trying 
on their ideas.” 

“Precisely,” said Grandon Cope. “They mean 
nothing false ; they are eager after the true, — the 
beautiful ; but they think they can lay hold of it ab- 
stractly; they forget that it must grow out of them, 
— that it cannot be gathered, or borrowed, or put on ; 
they forget the lilies of the field, and how they only 
gi’ow, and God takes care of the glory. 

“The older the world gets,” he continued, “I think 
the more it does try on; and the less real, simple, 
first-hand living there comes to be. There is too long 
a story behind. Almost everything seems to have 
been done. Somebody thinks a great thought; it 
comes through years and distances, or out of a differ- 
ent life, to other somebodies; and they, seeing it is 
something, fancy they can straightway jump into just 
such thinking, and how fine that will be ! Or, out of 
peculiar condition and character, time and tempera- 
ment, grows some peculiar social brilliancy; and at 
once you see, as soon as they hear of it, bright Yan- 
kee women flinging up their own later speciality and 
opportunity, which the world has come to and waits 
for, and turning themselves into Madame Recamiers, 
and their home-y back parlors into French salons. 
We are in danger of trying on our very patriotism. 
We are so full of the Declaration of Independence and 
the battle of Bunker Hill, that if some new national 
emergency were to arise, I think the first effect would 
have more or less of the looking-glass about it. If 
the occasion were real, the real thing would come, 
and it would be at the bottom all the while ; but the 
first popular apprehension would be a good deal of the 
new, grand attitude, — ^ the magnificence of being fore- 


ESTHETIC TEA. 327 

fathers; and our first battle might not be a Bunker 
Hill.’’ 

“Living is as great a puzzle as thinking,” said I, 
going back to his first word, which weighed with me. 
“And gets as easily snarled up. And one snarl drives 
you back into the other.” 

“You must n’t try to see through the whole skein, 
or to straighten it all out into a single thread before 
you begin to wind ; that makes a snarl, always. There 
is always an end, and that is what you have got to 
take hold of. If we each did that, and followed it 
simply, we should by and by see round, perfect lives, 
ready for God’s tapestry of the future, instead of all 
the world’s yarn thrown confusedly into a heap, and 
everybody tossing and twitching at it, — pulling it into 
hard knots in the attempt at brilliant, comprehensive 
ingenuities, or by way of showing how much farther 
one could see into the tangle than another.” 

“But if one gets hold of the wrong end at the 
first?” 

“Still it would unwind with patience. There would 
be loops to go through, and twists to reverse, and it 
might not be easy or pleasant. But there always 
comes some smooth running to every skein, before all 
is done.” 

“Would you give up the ideal, and the thinkers, 
then?” 

“No. Not any more than I would give up the as- 
tronomers, and the grand glimpses of the Cosmos. 
But they must not be in a hurry ; they must remem- 
ber that they are only small observers ; that it is the 
living that unravels. They can’t stand at any one 
point in time or in development, and think out the 
whole eternal fact and drift of being, any more than 
from a single attitude in time and space of the great 
heaven, we can read all the tremendous mysteries of 


B28 


HITHERTO. 


its circles and motions. It has got to be lived out, 
in God’s leisure and man’s obedience, as the story of 
the seons is told, little by little, in the slow shifting 
of the stars.” 

“Are you having it all to yourselves in this cor- 
ner ? ” 

Mrs. Holgate fidgeted up to us, catching some of 
the last words, — “seons, ” I think, startled her espe- 
cially, — and seeing Grandon Cope’s face alight with 
eloquence, and Hope’s with listening. 

“What are you three about? What is Mr. Cope 
saying? I am afraid the rest of us are losing a great 
deal.” 

Mr. Cope was like the tea and mutfins ; he was to 
he handed round; the family should have been helped 
last; Hope and I, as partly at home, should not have 
taken so much of the best things to ourselves. 

“Don’t take me away,” said Grandon Cope, chang- 
ing his manner humorously. “I couldn’t do it again; 
indeed, I didn’t mean to do it at all.” 

A hostess should never make ineffectual movements 
among her guests ; there come awkward moments, so, 
as to an inexjDert actor, de trop upon the stage, and 
with no resource of by-play. 

Mrs. Holgate stood irresolute for an instant, and 
then moved on to ask Miss Upfold to sing. 

During the stir of finding music, and restoring the 
piano to order, Grandon Cope fell back upon my other 
side, away from Hope, and while the prelude was play- 
ing, he spoke to me again, in a low voice. 

“Don’t go through false loops, by any means; nor 
yet be in a hurry to break your thread and make new 
ends. Be true, and you will be sure; and you will 
neither tangle your own skein nor any other. Are 
you going home soon? ” 

“ I suppose so ; before very long ; I think we must, ” 


ESTHETIC TEA. 


329 


I answered, in a hurried, difficult voice. I felt the 
quick, conscious flush leap up into my face, and burn 
there as if it never meant to go away; and there was 
a pulse in my throat that choked and pained me. 

They had talked it all over, then; and I had gained 
nothing by coming away ; it was all waiting for me. 

“Augusta wants you; she has plans to tell you of, 
in which you are included.” 

I don’t know what he thought of me; of course I 
understood ; it was the wedding that was to be soon, 
— perhaps at once ; and I had not a word of friend- 
ship or congratulation ; not even a smile ready for such 
news; my blushes* were all used up upon myself; I 
was only full of distress and perplexity; I was almost 
angry with worry. 

The singing began, and we could not talk any more. 

Afterward, when the company broke up, and he 
was taking leave, he came to me and said good-night, 
very kindly. He meant that I should not be fright- 
ened, or troubled; it was the purpose of his whole 
manner. I saw it, and it troubled me the more. Yet 
I was glad that he did come and say good-night. 

The next morning, at breakfast, they talked over 
the party, as to whether it had been a success. Evi- 
dently, they were not quite satisfied. 

“I was disappointed in Mr. Cope,” said Mrs. Hol- 
gate. “He seemed to break everything up. He 
wouldn’t really talk at all.” 

“He wouldn’t be shown off, that’s all,” said Co- 
rinna. “If Mary Upfold had n’t said ‘I and my lion, ’ 
I believe he would have behaved better.” 

“It turned into just a common sort of good time, 
at last,” said Harriet. “But I don’t know that I 
didn’t rather like it.” 

“Why, my gracious!” said Aunt Hdy. “What 
else would you have ? What are parties for ? ” 


330 


HITHEBTO 


“I think social intercourse, among cultivated peo- 
ple, ought to he something better. Something more, 
at any rate, ” replied Corinna. 

“And suppose they ain* t aXl so terribly cultivated? ” 

“We have a right to expect it,” said Corinna mag- 
nificently. “If one takes the trouble with one’s self, 
one has a right to demand the like culture in others. 
Otherwise, they are hardly worth while in any way.” 

“ Highty-tighty ! ” exclaimed Aunt Ildy, pushing 
hack her chair. “It ’s the same old Satan, after 
all! ” 

They were very good-humored, and they laughed at 
this. 

“I ’ll tell you one thing,” resumed Aunt Ildy, not 
unstimulated with her own success. “I think you 
make a great deal too free with solemn things. You 
talk about souls as if they were beans ; and you bring 
the Lord’s name in as pat and common as the day of 
the week ; and you undertake to tell what is grand and 
good and everlasting, as if you had just come down 
from Mount Sinai; when, all the time, you are just 
piling up your own human conceits, as the children of 
Israel did their ornaments, to make a golden calf of. 
There! ” 

“But — Miss Chism! Shouldn’t we share our 
life, and help each other with our best? Would you 
shut out religion from common talk, and only save it 
up for prayer-meetings and Sundays? Can’t you say 
‘God,’ except when the church -bells ring? Isn’t 
everything religion? Isn’t poetry truth, and art wor- 
ship ? ” 

“Don’t talk lingo to me. I believe in the Bible 
and going to meeting. And that people’s souls are 
something live and awful, that they ’ve got to save. 
I don’t believe you ’ll save ’em this way! What are 
you thinking of, Hope Devine ? ” 


ESTHETIC TEA. 


331 


Hope’s face was earnest; her eyes intense; she lis- 
tened with an anxiety; her brows dropped gently, 
as with some immediate awe that the others knew 
not of. 

“I was thinking,” she said, “that perhaps we 
should n’t any of us dare to say so much about these 
things, if we remembered that we could n’t talk behind 
God’s back!” 

“I shall go, girls, the first of the week, ’’Aunt Ildy 
said to us, that afternoon, upstairs. “I ’m getting 
tired. Jane Holgate is a good soul, but she ’s a hypo- 
crite. What she really cared for was the muffins, and 
that splendid cake. Why can’t she be contented to 
take comfort in ’em, in the plain old way? And why 
can’t folks eat ’em and praise ’em, and ask for re- 
ceipts ? It was better than this I ” 

On Monday we had letters from Uncle Royle and 
Lucretia. Everything was going on well. Lucretia 
had preserved the peaches, and there was “nothing 
particular to do now, till the cider apple -sauce, and 
the barberries, and the pig-killing.” 

Aunt Ildy was a little mysterious for a day or two, 
and behaved as if she suspected us of trying continu- 
ally to find her out, and of supposing that it was likely 
to be very much worth our while if we could. 

Then, all at once, while we were beginning to pack 
up, she pinched it out to us, like a dole of something 
that it was rather extravagant to let us have at all, 
and that we mustn’t ever expect any more of. 

“I ’ve made up my mind to go down to Duxbury, 
and see Whitcher Chism’s folks. They wouldn’t like 
it, if I came to Boston and did n’t. And they think 
a sight of their Duxbury clams.” 

“ Did you ever see the sea, Hope ? ” I asked, breath- 
lessly eager, as soon as we were alone. 


332 


HITHERTO. 


“Only once,” said Hope. “A great many years 
ago. And that was where it came into the dock.” 

So we two girls went away with Aunt Hdy to see 
the sea. How good she was to me ! I was just be- 
ginning to find her out. 

She did her best by me. Years ago, she knew it 
was good for me to be kept strict, and to learn to darn 
stockings. Now, with a more kindly and delicate 
perception, she knew that the great sea, which I had 
never seen, would be good for me. Better than to go 
back, now, to New Oxford and South Side. 

The great trouble with Aunt Hdy, in her manage- 
ment of my childhood, had been her belief in human 
depravity. To do her justice, the nearer the human 
nature was to herself, the more fearful she was for its 
salvation. She was hard, watchful, irritating; always 
picking after the sliver of original sin. 

“I told you so,” said Hope. “I told you how good 
she would be.” 


CHAPTER XXI. 


THE SILENT SIDE. . 

WINTER CHICKENS. 

Richard Hathaway came up, bareheaded, through 
the field-path from the cider-mill. He carried his hat 
carefully in his hand. He went in at the lower end 
of the long range of shed-building that, trim, neat, 
and comfortable, its open arches crammed with good 
oak and chestnut sticks, showing their ends in a close, 
even wall, helped to give the well-provided look that 
all these outer surroundings do give to a prosperous 
New England farmhouse. “Solid comfort,” a New 
England phrase, was well expressed and foretokened 
by its abundant store. 

At this lower end, where Richard entered, was the 
tool-room, floored and windowed; a long ladder was 
set up against the firm-built woodpile on that side 
where its extremity, held in by a few upright joists, 
formed the fourth wall, and shut it in warm from the 
open shed through all the winter, until the gradual 
demolition of the great fuel-heap broke into it late in 
the spring, and let in free and pleasant airs. 

Richard went up the ladder, hat in hand. The 
gurgling cluck of a brooding hen greeted him from 
the deep angle of the roof, in the small space left by 
the compact logs. 

“Well, old biddy! So you ’re determined? What 
do you want with winter chickens, I wonder, old 
biddy? What would you have done without a little 
help, old biddy ? How could you have got along with- 
out the hay? There, — there ’s an egg, biddy! And 


334 


HITHEETO. 


there ’s another, biddy ! There, and there, and there ; 
lots of eggs, biddy! How do you suppose you ’ll get 
your chickens down from the woodpile? Hadn’t 
thought of that, old biddy, had you ? Now, biddy, go 
to work! ” 

The old hen nestled and clucked, half disturbed and 
half grateful, as Richard tucked, one by one, talking 
to her all the time, fourteen warm white eggs under 
her ample feathers. There was an excellent under- 
standing between the two. From his great oxen down 
to the smallest chicken or the shyest kitten, there was 
this understanding, of help and kindness, of some in- 
tuitive sympathy with their fragment of the common 
life on his part, and of recognition and gratitude on 
theirs, between him and all his creatures. The bees 
would light .upon him, and let him handle them ; only 
kind, pure hearts, in clean, healthful bodies, can win, 
they say, this influence with the busy, wise, hot-tem- 
pered little things. 

When he had made his old brown biddy comforta- 
ble, Richard Hathaway came down. He put his hat 
on his head again, and sat down for a few minutes on 
a plough-beam that lay against the wall beneath the 
window. 

He sat there very quietly, thinking. He took up 
a piece of chalk that lay upon the window-ledge and 
made idle marks with it. 

“Winter chickens!” he was thinking to himself. 
“Some comforts come late. The old biddy’s in the 
right of it, though. She ’ll be better off than not to 
have had ’em at all. I wonder what kind of winter 
comforts, if any, will ever come to me ? I’m thirty 
years old. I don’t think I ’ve stopped to count the 
years before, since I was twenty. Human beings don’t 
make a ring every year, as trees do. I ’ve only made 
one ring in my life since then. I ’ve been waiting all 


THE SILENT SIDE. 


335 


these years, for that one hope ; and I never thought 
how long I was waiting, before. I never knew till 
lately what it would be to have it come to nothing, 
and what a slice of my life would be taken out and 
gone. I don’t suppose I ’m different from other peo- 
ple. Perhaps in ten years more I shall have got 
over it. And then I shall be forty. I wonder what 
she’ll do, and come to, in ten years? I’ve got my 
mother, dear soul! And she’s sixty-eight. She’s 
hearty. Ten years? Lord! let her live ten years, 
till I ’ve overlived this trouble I ” 

If he had seen it all written down, — his thought 
and his prayer, — he might, perhaps, have hardly 
known it again. But it was there; Heaven read it 
all. Ah, how many prayers Heaven does read, and, 
seemingly, flings by unanswered ! 

Richard Hathaway got up and went into the house, 
to see if his mother had oven-wood enough for her 
baking, and whether she wanted anything from the 
store at the Corner. 

He put his arm across her shoulders as he came and 
stood by her at her pie-board, and looked in her face 
with something that he wist not of giving itself straight 
from his good soul to hers. 

“Don’t work too hard, mother,” he said. 

And then he went down to the barn, and harnessed 
old Putterkoo, and drove away. 

Not from his thoughts; he perceived that. “How 
a thing follows a man on ! ” he said to himself. “ Like 
the moon; that goes miles and miles with you, always 
looking right over your shoulder just the same.” 

Day by day, through toil and rest, it went with 
him, always the same ; the same love, the same pain, 
the same patience ; the same thought of her, and the 
wonder what the time was doing for her. 

“They must come back pretty soon, I should think,” 


336 


HITHERTO. 


he said. “They ’ve been gone a good while. Miss 
Chism can’t leave the old gentleman much longer; and 
mother’ll want Hope. Mother sets stores by Hope; 
she ’s a good girl; I wish she ’d been my real sister. 
Somebody ’ll be coming for her, by and by, like as 
not ; if anything should happen to mother — Gee up, 
old Putterkoo! Somehow, I don’t like leaving her 
much, now Hope is away ! ” 

He brought her back a new butter-print, — a bunch 
of daisies ; and he bethought to choose a great, beauti- 
ful, cream-color and white cake-bowl with a wide lip, 
to replace the one that Martha broke the other day; 
and he put a paper of large white peppermints in his 
pocket for her. He liked so much to bring in unex- 
pected parcels for her, and to give them to her one by 
one. To give her some last little one, at the end, 
just when she thought she had got them all. 

He found her in the little east room when he came 
home and went in there, with his arms full of his 
packages. There was a pleasant smell of good things 
just baked; her morning labor was finished, and she 
had taken up her knitting-work for the few minutes 
before Martha would come in with the dinner. The 
white cloth was laid, and the two blue china plates, 
and the bright tumblers of clear, old-fashioned glass 
with their needle-like crimpings around the edge and 
base, and the shining old silver spoons, and the round 
salt-cellars, that matched the tumblers, and the little 
tray with sugar-bowi and cream-pitcher, and two shal- 
low, delicate, gold-rimmed cups; for Mrs. Hathaway 
liked her cup of tea with her dinner, and liked it 
always in a dainty way. A few sticks were burning 
with a slow pleasantness on the glittering little brass 
firedogs, for the early October day had been somewhat 
keen, except out in the broad sunlight; and the cat 
(cats always find the clean and cheery places; they 


THE SILENT SIDE. 


337 


know when a room is just swept and dusted and ready 
to be comfortable in, as well as anybody) was curled 
up on the rug. This is the reason, doubtless, why a 
cat is so associated with and suggestive of domestic 
cosiness ; she is rarely part of any but a quiet and or- 
derly picture; you won’t find puss establishing herself 
willingly in a dirty, confused kitchen; she will walk 
through a-tiptoe, with her shoulders up, seeking rest 
.and finding none. 

“It’s real nice to find you here, mother,” said 
Richard, as he put his parcels down and came over to 
her, the freshness of comfort touching him, in the 
place made just so fresh with comfort every day. 

“Why, where should you find me, son? Ain’t I 
always here at dinner-time ? ” 

“Yes; that’s it; it’s always nice. It’s the al- 
ways that makes it.” 

“Richie, — I can’t be here always, you know.” 

“Mother, don’t say that — to-day! ” 

“Why to-day? ” 

“Because I ’ve been thinking all day, somehow, 
how I could never get along without you.” 

“I would n’t say it at all, Richie, only I can’t help 
thinking that when the time comes — in a long while, 
perhaps, but who can tell? — I could n’t bear to leave 
you alone. And we might have happy days together 
beforehand; you — and she — and I. You ought to 
have a good wife before many years more, Richie, and 
he all settled down. I don’t have half stockings 
enough to knit, either; and I ’m tired of gray yarn,” 
she added playfully. “I should like to make some 
soft little socks again, in red and white clouds. 
Mary’s children are all too big, and they wear white 
boughten ones.” 

“You ’re like the old hen, mother; you ’d like some 
winter chickens. Did you know the old brown biddy 


338 


HITHERTO. 


was setting, away up on the farther end of the wood- 
pile ? ” 

“There, now, Richard! that’s some of your put- 
ting up, I know! You do always like to be puttering 
with the creatures ! ” 

“So I do, mother; that’s one reason you and I 
suit so well. See how pleased you ’ll he when she 
walks out with her fourteen chickens, and you have to 
take them all into the back kitchen and cuddle ’em in 
a basket ! I look out for your little comforts, — don’t 
I, mother? That puts me in mind; I’ve got your 
white Saxony ; here, — is it fine enough ? ” 

“Oh, that ’s charming good, Richard! Why, that ’s 
better than the last Hobart had, — is n’t it ? ” 

“And what ’s that? Will that do, too? ” 

“Well, now! How did you ever come to think of 
that, without my telling? I ’ll make you some sponge 
cake to-morrow. I never can make it, except in just 
such a yellow and white howl. Why, yes, Richard, 
it ’s a beauty.” 

“And there ’s — what is it? Oh, it ’s a new but- 
ter-print. Ain’t you tired of the rose? Those are 
daisies; and here’s a pair of spats, to make little 
prickly balls with, or crimped rolls. I can show you; 
Mrs. Hobart told me how.” 

Mrs. Hathaway’s lap was full now; and her face 
was as pleased as a child’s. “It wasn’t the things so 
much,” she said; “but it was being always thought 
of; and Richard’s way.” 

“Well, I suppose you must have some peppermints, 
too, to keep you good. You ’ll have to hold your 
hands, though, for the paper’s all untwisted.” 
“Didn’t you get a letter from Hope? ” 

“Why, how craving you are! Haven’t you got 
enough yet? Why didn’t you ask before? ” 

“Well, I thought I ’d wait and see. Only when 


THE SILENT SIDE. 339 

you came to the goodies, I began to be afraid; for I 
have been expecting word from her. ” 

“Didn’t you suppose I knew you’d expect the 
sugar-plums? Well, there’s the letter; and that is 
the last thing.” 

“And that’s the best bringing of all,” said Mrs. 
Hathaway. 

“I may as well take away the rest, then;” and 
Richard relieved his mother’s lap of its burden, and 
gathered up the papers and strings, and put the white 
yarn and the peppermints on her work-table, and went 
off with the rest to Martha. 

Hope wrote : — 

Miss Chism has made up her mind to come home on 
Friday, and I am glad of it, for I feel as if you had 
spared me, now, longer than you ought to; but I wish 
I could only tell you what a beautiful time we have 
had. It is a kind of a time that don’t go off with the 
having, hut that I can bring home with me to keep. 
If it had been only people and shops, as it was in Bos- 
ton, I might have forgotten in a little while, — at least 
a good deal of it. But I never can forget the sea. 
There has been one stormy day, and a long blow; the 
September gale, they think. Yesterday it was pleas- 
ant again, and we went down to the shore to see the 
rollers. They came in like great, leaping lions, roar- 
ing, with terrible white manes. They plunged upon 
the land, and grasped at it, hut never reached any 
farther than just where it was measured that they 
should come. And I kept thinking of the still, green 
country away back from it all, where it never gets ; 
and how the strangest thing of all is that it is always 
here when we are up there in the stillness, and some 
of us in our lives long have never seen it. There have 
been many things in this journey of ours that have 


840 


HITHERTO. 


made me think how close things may he that we know 
nothing about. They make me think of “the land 
that is very far off, ” and yet perhaps only far off just 
as these are, till the minute when all at once we come 
to them — so easily. 

Dear Mrs. Hathaway, for all the pleasure I have 
had, and for which I am so very thankful to Miss 
Chism and to you, I do long to come home again, and 
I am so glad that by next Saturday I shall see you. 
We shall get home to New Oxford late on Friday, and 
as Saturday is Richard’s day for coming in, I shall he 
all ready to go hack with him. Give my love to him, 
and to Martha. I do hope that little spotted kitten 
is safe. She did get under the rockers and into the 
doorways and everywhere else where she should n’t be, 
so. I ’m so afraid if Martha leaves the top of the 
cistern off, she ’ll tumble in. I want to find every- 
thing just exactly as it was, safe and well ; most of 
all, you; and that you are not tired out or discour- 
aged with my staying away so long. 

Your thankful and loving 

Hope. 

There was something scratched, just after “ loving. ” 

Hope had been going to write “child,” as Mrs. 
Hathaway did in the beginning of her letters to herself. 
She thought better of that, and so there was only a 
thin little place in the paper instead. 


CHAPTER XXII. 


SAFE AND WELL. 

I HAD written to Augusta Hare, after our arrange- 
ment was made to go to Duxbury. I thought I ought, 
after what Grandon Cope had said to me of her, and 
of her wanting me. I only told her, simply, that I 
had met Mr. Cope, and what he had said; that my 
aunt had changed her plans, and that we should be 
away perhaps a week or two longer. 

If I could only put off, and keep away! It was the 
only relief — perhaps it was a cowardly one — to my- 
self ; but I felt also that it was the best kindness to 
others. Allard Cope would surely see; it would be 
as decisive as words. Yet I could not get out of my 
mind what Amit Ildy had declared so positively, with 
her old-fashioned authority of experience, — “If he 
has got anything to say, he will say it.” 

I purposely refrained from giving anything like an 
address, though I knew, of course, they could find out 
from Uncle Royle if they desired. I only mentioned 
that Aunt Ildy was going to take us to visit some 
friends at the seashore. I hoped Augusta would not 
write to me, and she did not. 

It was wonderful how Hope’s nature seemed to 
bloom and enlarge, — how quickly she received and 
assimilated, — in all these new experiences and oppor- 
tunities. It gave me a conception of what a simply 
true glad spirit might come to in the kingdom of 
heaven, and how speedily. 

How well I remember the moment when we first 
caught the great breath of the sea! Not a mere fla- 


342 


HITHERTO. 


vor, or chill, such as the east wind brings up into the 
city streets, or over far-away fields; but the full, 
strong, tingling, glorious life with which every pulse 
of the air comes charged, seeming as if truly given 
up out of the pure depth in its mighty, wonderful 
respirings. 

We spent much time upon the shore. We went in 
parties, and we went by ourselves; we had whole long 
mornings there. We sat on the old rocks, and looked 
out upon the blue boundlessness of air and sea, as into 
spiritual spaces ; as if life — the trifle of human do- 
ing — were left behind upon the land. How small 
seemed the few, divided happenings and concernments, 
— the day’s round and motive, — back there in little 
Broadfields or New Oxford, or the restless and contra- 
dictory impulses of the promiscuous city, in view of 
this great unit, moving in tremendous majesty, to and 
fro, drawn only by the awful influences of heaven! 

There could be no better place in which to lose a 
small or a selfish regret, or an overweening anxiety. 
I thought less of myself; I seemed, indeed, to have 
got away from myself ; to have left that insignificance 
behind. I drew in breaths from an infinite freedom, 
that seemed to widen my heart and make it strong. 

Hope used to sit in long silences, with that awed 
light in her golden, lustrous eyes, and then come back 
as it were, just to say something out of an apocalypse. 

“It is like the earth changing and melting away; 
turning from things to spirit; from glory to glory; 
from purer to most pure. The water — and, beyond, 
the sky; it is like the Hem of the Garment! ” 

She put her hand out toward the white fringe of the 
incoming waves, that had crept up, in the sunlighted 
morning tide, nearer and nearer us where we .sat. 

It was the last still, summer-sweet morning of those 
September days; after that came the gale. I have the 


SAFE AND WELL. 343 

picture of it now in my very heart ; and I hear Hope’s 
word again always as I look upon it. 

They kept us there for more than a fortnight. 
There is little such visiting or welcoming in these 
days. People can make morning calls, now, twenty 
miles away; if they go forty, perhaps they stay to 
dinner. 

We got home on a Friday night. Hope was to stay 
with us till morning. 

Lucretia seemed to he divided, in her comfortable 
reception of us, between the pride of her own house- 
keeping, and the abrupt realization that Miss Chism 
being actually there, was different from her being 
only expected. That the keys and the arrangements 
were to be given up; whether she should warm and 
feed her first and then do it, or whether she should 
relinquish all authority and let her choose how she 
would take care of herself, was a sudden problem of 
succession. She set forth her good cheer half depre- 
catingly. 

Hope and I went to bed early, in the front room. 
We were tired and wakeful, both; Hope was restless 
with the feeling of being so near home, and not quite 
there; I had all my old perplexing worries, in the 
same old place, to get into again and cover myself up 
with just as I got into my bed. 

So we lay with our eyes wide open, and making 
many unquiet turns, for a good while ; now and then 
speaking to each other, but for the most part silent, 
for two reasons : we were really needing and longing 
to get to sleep; and in the next place. Aunt Ildy was 
in the adjoining room in her bed against the wall, and 
we might reasonably expect a sharp, warning rap if 
we trespassed upon the peace of the night with any 
chatter. 

I think it must have been long past eleven o’clock 


344 


HITHERTO. 


before we became quietly unconscious, and I am sure 
that Aunt Ildy and Uncle Royle had gone off into 
dreams nearly two hours before, to the rhythm of 
“fifteen two, fifteen four;” for they had their long 
intermitted game of cribbage the first thing after tea 
was cleared away, and counted fifteens up to the very 
last minute of taking their candles and going off to 
their rooms. 

It was a little after twelve, perhaps, when, from 
that first, sound, grasping sleep from which it is such 
a pain to be awakened, like the bringing back to life 
from almost death, I started suddenly with a vague 
feeling of some noise, half-dreamed and half-realized, 
— a person knocking somewhere down below. 

I sat up in bed and listened ; somebody really was 
moving about on the broad step at the top of the railed 
flight that ran up from the shop door to the house 
entrance. Somebody in great, heavy boots, who was 
tired of waiting, and who made as much noise as pos- 
sible upon the little platform that allowed of three 
steps to and fro. 

I sprang out of bed, and ran to the window; just 
as I pushed it cautiously up, the knocking came again ; 
this time with a whip-handle, and rang through the 
house. 

“For — gracious — sake! ” cried Aunt Ildy’s voice 
at her open door, instantly; and Hope was at my side 
at the window. 

I called to the man. 

“What do you want, sir? ” I asked. 

“ Has the folks got home ? ” 

“The family is all at home, — yes,” I replied, 
thinking it well that he should know, whoever he 
might be, that we were in full domestic force. 

“I come over from the Hathaways’,” he called 
back. “The old lady ’s had an awful fall, and they 


SAFE AND WELL. 


345 


want Hope Devine. I ’ve ben for the doctor, and was 
to come and fetch her. She ’d better be as spry as 
she can. Martha ’s awful scairt.” 

Hope had lit a match and a candle, and the light, 
as I turned round and saw her in it, showed her 
deadly pale, but she never said a word, only put her 
feet quickly into her slippers, and threw a flannel gown 
on. She was downstairs, and at the door, before I 
could make Aunt Ildy understand. 

“Has the doctor gone to Broadfields?” we heard 
her ask, as the man came in. 

“Yes, I didn’t lose no time with him; he’s used 
to being knocked up. I guess I ’ve ben a-trying my 
fists on that air door for a matter of twenty minutes. ” 

“Come in, Jabez, and sit down; I shall be ready 
in ten minutes.” 

Hope glided swiftly up the stairs again, and passed 
Aunt Ildy and me in the entry, with her pale face, 
still saying not a hindering word. She sat down on 
a cricket, drew on her stockings quickly, then sprang 
up and flashed herself, as it were, into her other gar- 
ments, one after another, tossed her hair back from 
her temples and rolled it into a knot behind, and had 
on her bonnet and shawl in less than the first seven 
minutes of the ten. I stood and handed her things. 

Aunt Ildy had got on her wadded wrapper, and her 
cloth shoes, and her frisette, and had gone downstairs ; 
and when we came, was giving the man a glass of 
wine, and some doughnuts, and hearing the details of 
what he had to tell, which Hope had not inquired. 

“It was down the back-chamber stairs; most o’ the 
way, I guess, from top to bottom, and it ’s a crooked 
flight. Martha says ’t was that air dreadful little 
cat, a-laying on the step. She ain’t moved sence; and 
they can’t do nothing to git her out o’ the sog.” 

“ Drink a glass of wine, Hope, to warm you, ” said 


346 


HITHERTO. 


Aunt Ilcly, fairly putting it to her lips, for Hope 
hardly noticed what was said. “The man ’s in a 
chaise, and I can’t hinder you, to get ready, either; 
hut I ’ll be out there by sunrise. I ’ve told Royle, 
and sent him back to bed, so ’s to get him up again in 
season. ” 

Hope swallowed the wine, and it brought a kind of 
sob with its stimulation; but she still said nothing, 
only kissed Aunt Ildy and me, and passed — the same 
swift, pale vision — out of the house, the man follow- 
ing. 

It was all over in such a mere fragment of time. 

Aunt Ildy and I stood and looked at each other for 
a minute after the door was shut ; and then she went 
back into the sitting-room, and put away the cake and 
wine. 

“ Oh, Aunt Ildy ! ” I cried, going after her, and 
standing by. “What will they do? ” 

“I can’t talk about it, child, I ’ve got to save up. 
I shall take six drops of camphor, and give you six; 
and we must just hush up and go to bed again. I ’ve 
got to sleep from now till half past four o’clock.” 

That very first morning at home, while Aunt Ildy 
was out at Broadfields, Augusta Hare came down to 
see me. 

“You behaved very badly,” she said, with her 
graceful, polished playfulness, “running away and 
never coming to see me, as was proper. But I have 
made ui3 my mind to get it all over, and for fear, if 
I waited, I should find myself in duty bound to stand 
upon my dignity again, I have come right to you. 
You see I must have you for one of the bridesmaids; 
not regular bridesmaids, either, — there is to be no 
set, equal number of ladies and gentlemen; but Gran- 
don’s brother, and some of his particular friends, will 
be about him, and mine with me; just grouped, you 


SAFE AND WELL. 


347 


know, a sort of general, friendly backing up. And it 
is to be in a fortnight, now; the cards are just going 
out. I think I am very good, Nannie, and I think 
you can’t refuse.” 

do thank you very much,” I said, touched by 
the persistence of her kindness, and her notice of me ; 
“but you don’t know. Something has just happened. 
They are in great trouble out at the farm, and Aunt 
Ildy is there. Mrs. Hathaway has met with a terrible 
accident. I could n’t think of dresses and weddings, 
now, Augusta.” 

Augusta’s face changed. She looked, really, more 
than disappointed; as if some nicely adjusted plan had 
gone all wrong with a sudden, insuperable difficulty. 

“Besides,” I began again, and stopped. The rest 
was in my face, though; in my consciousness, at any 
rate, so vividly that it touched hers magnetically. 

“There isn’t any besides,” she answered quickly. 
“There ’s no use in building windmills on purpose to 
run against. I believe I frightened you more than I 
needed, out there at the Hathaways’ that day. You 
were nervous, and I was looking too far ahead, — into 
my hopes and dreams for you, perhaps, Nannie. My 
own dreams had just come true, you know, and it 
seemed as if everything was going to turn out all at 
once, like the end of a novel; or else be spoiled in 
some foolish hurry. We had better not have talked 
about it that day, Nannie. Everything always works 
out right, if people just keep straight on. That is 
what Grandon says. You don’t mean to be rude to 
the Copes, surely, and throw back all their friendship 
in their faces, for no reason at all ? Especially now 
that I am going to be a Cope ? ” she added, with her 
little air of confident winsomeness. 

I could see afterwards how it all was, and what it 
meant. I could not understand at the moment, either 


348 


HITHERTO. 


Augusta Hare’s magnanimity and patience, or the mo- 
tive of her policy. 

Why should she care so much for what became of 
me ? Why should I have been any part of her dreams ? 

It was simply a mixture of vanity and good-nature, 
added to a natural love for planning and contriving, 
and a great tact in carrying things out. 

Augusta must always be the centre of the tableau; 
I should do excellently well as an accessory. She 
liked me, and she thought I should never really be in 
her way. I admired her, too. She had always been 
fond of that childish homage of mine. 

She was to marry Grandon Cope. In the charming 
surroundings of South Side, she was to be the conspic- 
uous object ; the young, elegant matron ; the mistress 
in years to come. The full light was to fall upon her. 
It would depend very much upon whom Allard mar- 
ried, whether any shadow of rivalry interfered, or any 
cross light spoiled the grouping. It would be all very 
well if he took quiet, little, grateful me. That would 
be quite comfortable, and really help to complete her 
happiness. She knew all about me, and liked me, and 
I looked properly up to her. There was thorough 
kindness, too, as far as it went ; she knew it would be 
such an excellent thing for me ; so much better than I 
might have expected ; and it would be such a satisfac- 
tion to have assisted to bring it about. 

She had had time to think that she had made a mis- 
step; that the light in which she had put affairs in 
that talk at Broadfields was fatal, in my then state of 
feeling, to the whole. Perhaps she discerned some- 
what, with that subtle tact of hers, of the secret, hith- 
erto undefined influence, that suddenly shaped itself 
to a dim recognition with me, and knowing that now, 
in the nature of things, this must change, or subside 
into its suitable place, she judged that the undue revul- 


SAFE AND WELL. 


349 


sion of my feelings might, perhaps, be temporary; 
that all would look different to me again by and by. 

She wanted to get back to safe, uncommitted rela- 
tions; to let things work a little longer; so, perhaps, 
they would work out. Allard must speak for himself, 
when the time came. I think she had doubtless be- 
come very elder-sisterly and intimate with him already, 
and won his confidence in that marvelous way in 
which she won everybody’s. She had probably eased 
his mind as she was trying now to ease mine; per- 
suaded him that this going away would be quite as 
likely to result in his favor as otherwise; that girls 
had to have time to find themselves out ; if they were 
let alone awhile, they would know better what they 
wanted. 

I can somehow imagine just what she would have 
been likely to say. 

She left me that morning, remarking that she would 
come in again, or send, to-morrow; she should be anx- 
ious to know how Mrs. Hathaway was ; she was so ex- 
cessively sorry that anything should have happened to 
her. 

The next morning, when her little note of inquiry 
came, I had to answer that Aunt Ildy was still at the 
farm; that Mrs. Hathaway continued in the same 
strange, dangerous state; that I supposed there was 
little hope that she would recover from her injuries; 
that the doctor feared there was broken nervous con- 
nection in some part of the spine, from the shock of 
the fall ; that they were all in great trouble, and that 
I was greatly troubled for them. 

Neither she nor I spoke further of the interrupted 
plans. Augusta was always well - bred ; she always 
gave way to proprieties. 

So a week went by. Aunt Ildy drove in twice to 
see how we were getting on, to bring us news, and to 


350 


HITHERTO. 


get things that she wanted. At the end of the week, 
dear Mrs. Hathaway was gone. Out of the still, mys- 
terious half-death, half-life, that held them all in such 
pain and anxiety, she passed, with a hardly perceptible 
change at last, quite away from their sight and hold, 
into that fullness of life which needs not the body, but 
leaves it to its rest. 

And Richard Hathaway was all alone. 


CHAPTER XXIII. 


WINTER DAYS. 

What would Hope do now? 

People began over again with that, already. 

“She can’t stay there with that young man, of 
course, ” said Lucretia ; and everybody else, we knew, 
was saying the same. 

It made me cross. 

“It’s her home, Lucretia,” I said, snapping up 
all Broadfields over Lucretia’s shoulders. “Why 
should nH she stay there? ‘That young man’ has 
always been there; it ’s nothing new; and she ’s used 
to his ways, and nobody could make him half so com- 
fortable as she can.” 

“That ’s for he and she to settle betwixt them- 
selves, ” replied Lucretia, with short significance. 

“ I shall come back to-morrow, and stay a week, ” 
Aunt Ildy said to Hope, the afternoon of the funeral, 
when we had got back to the farm. “That ’s as long 
as I can stay; Royle’s rheumatism is beginning to 
plague him, and he wants me; but that’ll give you 
time to look round and settle your plans.” 

“Why, Miss Chism, I haven’t any plans to settle! ” 
said Hope simply. “I shall just try and keep every- 
thing on, her way. I don’t want there to be any 
difference, except ” — The thought of the great 
difference stopped Hope’s word with tears. 

“Child, can’t you see thaf it is different? Do you 
suppose you can stay on here ? Richard Hathaway ’s 
got to have a housekeeper. You ain’t old enough.” 


352 


HITHERTO. 


Hope’s face flushed, hut not with the idea Miss 
Chism intended to convey. 

“I don’t believe anybody, ever so much older, could 
do any better for Richard than I would. I know just 
how he likes things. Why, Miss Chism, he could n’t 
get along with any new — old — woman ! ” 

“It is n’t that, Hope. Can’t you see? It is n’t 
proper. Folks would talk.” 

Then Hope saw. Then she grew grandly indig- 
nant. Her pure intent for the first time clashed 
against the world’s careful and ostentatious wall of 
defenses, and struck young fire against the stones. 

“ Do you think I would go away for that ? ” she 
cried, with the blaze in her eyes. “When he needs 
me so, and nobody else could do ? When his mother 
depended on me so ? Depends on me now, Miss 
Chism?” 

“Well — only we ain’t quite in the kingdom of 
heaven yet, ” said Aunt Ildy slowly, and very dubi- 
ously. 

“We ’re in God’s world, dear Miss Chism, and just 
where He has put us, every one,” said Hope sweetly 
and solemnly. “I know I ought to stay — awhile 
— and look after Richard. Everybody must n’t go 
away and leave him, all at once. Why, he would n’t 
let me go. Miss Ildy, I don’t believe, even if you said 
so to him ! ” 

“I shall come to-morrow, and stay a week.” Aunt 
Ildy returned upon this, and let it rest there for the 
time. 

It ended in Hope’s taking, quietly, without any 
more talk, her own way. She stayed on, with Mar- 
tha and Richard, following her old, simple round of 
duties, living just as she always had lived. People 
talked — of the “strangeness of her not minding,” 
that was all, of course ; Hope knew little of what they 
said, and cared less. 


WINTER BAYS. 


353 


And so the winter went by. 

The Grandon Copes were married and gone. Gone 
to stay some few months in Washington, during the 
session; before they returned, they would visit Cincin- 
nati, and Professor Mitchel’s new Observatory, — a 
great interest with Grandon Cope, and an enterprise of 
which he and his father had been among the liberal 
helpers. Grandon had his own large, independent 
property, bequeathed to him by his English great-un- 
cle, the late Hugh Grandon, of the famous London 
mercantile house of Grandon, Cope & Co. 

And I was settled down again, in the old routine. 
My life had gone back into plain prose again. Even 
the perplexities that had been a painful excitement, 
yet still excitement while they lasted, were over. 
That afternoon, when Aunt Ildy would have the fire 
lighted in the best parlor, and such a ceremony made 
of his coming, like a “ conference ” among the Grandi- 
sons, — when I saw Allard Cope alone, and listened 
to what he had to say, and had come determinately, as 
she foretold, and demanded of Aunt Ildy permission 
and opportunity to say; when I had answered him, 
plainly and sadly, that it was a great deal better than 
I had any deserving for, and that I was ashamed, and 
sorry, and grateful, but that it could not be, it would 
not be honest to him to let it be, — that winter after- 
noon shut down and ended, with the short twilight, 
the brief romance also, that had gleamed into my 
homely life. 

When I think of the rest of that winter, I just re- 
member putting on, day after day, the same dark- 
brown cashmere dress, with narrow, bright - colored 
Persian stripes; sewing in the afternoon with Aunt 
Ildy on a new dozen of shirts that we were making for 
Uncle Royle ; putting a fresh part-breadth — matching 
the stripes carefully — into my dress, when I had 


354 


HITHERTO. 


burned it one day against the stove; setting in new 
under- sides to the tight-fitting sleeves when they had 
frayed at the elbows ; taking out and putting away the 
tea-things, and freshening the fire, and kee23ing on 
with the shirts in the evenings, while Aunt Ildy and 
Uncle Royle played cribbage between tea and bed time. 
I remember Richard Hathaway’s sad face and quiet 
manner, as he came in every Saturday and brought 
Hope’s nice butter, fresh and sweet as June all win- 
ter. I do not think I remember anything else. 

Allard Cope went to New York, and began to prac- 
tice law. The house at South Side was shut up for 
several months. Mr. and Mrs. Cope were in Boston. 
The girls were with them a part of the time, and for 
a part were visiting in different places among their 
friends. 

Nothing happened. All the happenings had been 
in those few summer and autumn weeks. Nothing 
ever would happen, I thought, again. 

It was nearly spring when Uncle Royle was taken 
down with that rheumatic fever. He had had a good 
deal of his old rheumatic pain and stiffness, all winter ; 
but during the mild, damp weather of February he 
took cold, and after that a terrible inflammatory attack 
set in, which laid him up with tedious and intense 
suffering for nearly two months. 

Then Aunt Ildy and I had our hands full with nurs- 
ing ; and then I found out yet more of what Aunt Ildy 
really was. She was sharp and imperative. It was, 
“Here, quick!” “Give me that!” “Run and do 
this!” “Don’t hinder; hush; there! let me come!” 
But how dearly she did love Uncle Royle ! 

I could seem to see the little boy and girl — the 
brother and sister — in them then, as if they had 
never grown old, or slow, or hard. 

We kept his limbs swathed in wet, cool bandages; 


WINTER DAYS. 


355 


and he thought, in the wanderings of fever and pain, 
that he was a child again, wading in a brook; and 
Aunt Ildy humored him, and talked about the fishes, 
and the brook-lilies, and school-time ; he got his real 
anxiety about his business all mixed up with his fancied 
boyish worry about being late at school, and missing 
his lessons. “But I must keep my feet in the water 
a little longer, Ildy,” he would say; “I must go into 
that deep place once more; I want to feel the water 
up to my knees; it takes the fire out.” 

And she would tell him “there was plenty of time; 
the academy quarter-bell had n’t rung yet.” 

“You ’ll tell me when it does, won’t you? I think 
I should like to lie down here, and just go to sleep a 
minute.” 

And then, perhaps, she would shake her finger at 
me, in her sharp, impatient way, and point to the 
window- shutter, with a push at it in the air, for me 
to go and shut it closer, and all the while her voice 
would be so kind to him, saying, “Yes, Royle, go to 
sleep; it ’s shady now; and there ’s plenty of time; ” 
and more than once I saw tears in her eyes that she 
had no idea I knew of. 

So I could be patient, seeing truly what was in her, 
and what her impatience came from ; and Aunt Ildy 
and I began to fit each other more comfortably and 
kindly, in that hard, weary time, than ever we did 
before. 

When the days grew sunny toward the end of April, 
and as May came in, sweet and springlike this year. 
Uncle Royle grew slowly better; and by the time the 
buds were bursting into leaf, and the balm-trees in 
the lane sent out their full breath of healing, and we 
had the windows open in the long, bright mornings, 
he could sit up and look out and enjoy it all, and eat 
his broiled chicken or his broth. Richard Hathaway 


356 


HITHERTO. 


brought him a chicken every time he came in; some 
of a late autumn brood that were large and beautiful 
now, fed all winter with sweet grains, and cared for 
as he cared for living things. 

The spring cheered us all up; though Aunt Ildy was 
“crazed ” with the cleaning and the sewing and the 
thousand things that always crazed her when the drive 
was on, and that were a fearful accumulation now, 
from the demands of sickness that had so long thi’ust 
all else aside. 

Lucretia had “expected it,” she said; “there ’d 
ben a lookin’ -for of judgment in her mind all along, 
and now here ’twas. If there isn’t a March wind in 
the house, there must be a May thunder-storm; but 
’t will be all the same, come June, let alone a hundred 
years hence.” 

So she worked on, with a great might, and a canty 
good-will, from the attic lumber that must be all 
turned over once a year, and freshly bestowed, to the 
firkins and barrels in the rambling cellar; until she 
declared, with a Spartan triumph, that “there was n’t 
a teaspoonful of dust in the house, nor a bone that 
didn’t ache, through and through, in her body.” 

Martha came in one day, from the farm, shopping, 
and stopped for a chat. 

“What ’s the sperrichual use, do you s’pose, of 
spring cleanings? ” says she. “It ’s a teachin’ world, 
and so I presume there’s a reason; though why it 
wasn’t all cleared up after the Creation, and feed 
so ’s to stay, has always been one of the providential 
mysteries to me. Just think what the world would 
be, if it only war n’t for dirt! Why, I don’t see 
why it wouldn’t be kingdom come right off! Take 
away the wash-days, and the scrub-days, and the 
cleanin’ up after everything, and clo’es growin’ mean 
and good-for-nothin’ with the grim o’ wearin’, and I 


WINTER BAYS. 357 

guess there wouldn’t be anything left hut the ‘rest 
that remaineth, ’ and the hallelujahs ! ” 

Her quaint words struck me. It seemed as if the 
“putting on of incorruption ” would hold the whole. 
I remembered them and told them afterward to Hope. 
She always had a “spiritual meaning.” 

“Of course, ” said Hope. “There’s a reason; the 
same reason that runs through everything. It ’s a 
teaching world, as Martha says ; we have to deal with 
the outside as we ought to with the in; they ’re made 
to fit, and help. If we didn’t have to scrub and 
clean, how should we learn to be thorough with our- 
selves? and thoroughness is ^rweness. I think when 
we come to hate dirt in house-corners, we begin to 
hate it in soul-corners, too; and that ’s precisely what 
the training is for. I never thought of it before, — 
exactly, she went on, with her happy look of new 
truth; “but that’s how cleanlinesses next to godli- 
ness, and God’s own sign for it, — isn’t it? And 
that’s why busy home-life is so good for people; 
we ’re doing double when we dust and put right, and 
we don’t even know it. We are learning, like the 
babies with their blocks.” 

“ ‘ A servant with this clause 

Makes meanest work divine ; 

Who sweeps a room, as by God’s laws, 

Makes that, and the action, fine,’ ” 

I quoted to her. 

“Why, who said that? ” she asked quickly. 

“George Herbert,” I told her. 

“ Did he say any more like it ? ” 

I wish I could put down the words to make them 
sound like Hope, as she spoke when she was bright 
and full, with quick, pleased thought; and when a 
thought was given her that met hers. 

“ Did he say any more like it ? ” The bits of Saxon 


358 


HITHERTO. 


syllables — her sudden, glad questions or exclamations 
always shaped themselves in such — fell like rapid lit- 
tle ripples over her lips ; her tongue rolled, as it were, 
a swift, musical reveille with them ; they were inde- 
scribable forth-springings of an instant, wide-awakened 
delight. 

I found the book for her, and she took it home. 

Hope grew just as the plants grow; she sent out her 
rootlets, and she unfolded the fresh leaves of her own 
beautiful life, and from earth and air there came to 
her continually the feeling and the influences she 
needed. Knowledges gathered themselves to her; she 
came across them ; “ everything put her in mind ; ” the 
most beautiful things were hers beforehand; she knew 
them instantly by sight; by sweet elective afiinities 
she made herself a dweller in the best, without need of 
deliberate, purposeful effort of culture, or far, pains- 
taking search. I thought many times of what Rich- 
ard had said of her and her gentle content : “ in the 
middle of her pasture.” I thought, too, of the words 
that were so like: “He feedeth me in green pastures; 
he leadeth me beside the still waters ; he restoreth ” 
— he completeth — “my soul.” 

Hope came in to New Oxford often, after the spring 
business was over with us and at the farm. 

One day, while she was with us, she fell, two or 
three times, into some thoughtful, occupied mood, that 
seemed strange to me. Then, at last, just before she 
went away, she said to Aunt Ildy, with something of 
that same quick, rippling way of speech that signified 
also when a thing was all thought out and finished in 
her mind, — 

“I ’ve come to it. Miss Chism. I ’ve found out it 
will be best. And the work is done, and things are 
all straight, and summer is coming, and — perhaps — 
Richard can begin to do just as well without me. 
But — you see — where shall I go ? ” 


WINTER DAYS. 


359 


She laughed a little fearless laugh, as the last four 
words came out in a spin of hurry; as if it were only 
funny to think that at the moment she really did not 
know. 

“Come here,” said Aunt Ildy right ofP. 

“Why! Might I? If I should quite make up my 
mind, — some day suddenly, perhaps, — might I say 
that?” 

“Yes; that ’s exactly what you might say; and the 
best thing, too ! ” 

“ Should I be of any consequence, — any help, — I 
mean? Wouldn’t it be a fifth wheel. Miss Ildy? ” 

“You’re always worth your bread and butter, — 
and your cake, too. Come whenever you get ready.” 

I sat by, thinking how strangely things came about, 
all in a minute; wondering what Richard Hathaway 
would do without her, or if he would let her go; and 
feeling how pleasant and nice it would be if Hope did 
come to live with us. 

But first, — Richard had been talking about it this 
great while, ever since Uncle Royle began to get bet- 
ter, — we were to go to the farm, all of us, and stay 
a week, — a week of the June weather, and the straw- 
berries. 

“It would do Mr. Chism so much good to get out 
of the town awhile. John Eveleith can manage.” 

John Eveleith, the young clerk whom Uncle Royle 
had had from a boy, had managed, all through his ill- 
ness. Uncle Royle talked of giving him a partner- 
ship. He was getting old, he said, and could not ex- 
pect to hold everything in his own hands much longer. 

Richard planned it all, and asked us just as he 
would have done years ago. 

He had kept his promise. “It was all taken back.” 
He wanted us to go and come as we had done; that 
the old friendship should be the same. 


360 


HITHERTO. 


I was so glad that he did ; that he could ; I thought 
he was getting well over it all ; it was nearly a year, 
now. I thought he had had, in his quiet way, a feel- 
ing of pleasant usedness to me, a fancy that we could 
“get along” and be comfortable together; a gentle 
liking and tenderness for me out of the gentleness of 
his nature, — a nature that would only suffer quietly 
and be gently disappointed, never rise to storms and 
spasms of passion and pain, — and that now, after 
these last months that had stretched themselves with 
all their heavier burden between, he turned willingly 
and freely to the old simple friendliness that he 
needed, and we might go back into the summer-time 
together. 

It comforted me. It made me almost contented 
with my life, that had failed to enlarge itself to my 
hopes and dreams, but that held yet some sweet and 
simple reality. 

There were two sides of me. There always were. 
With my plain, everyday self, I could take much 
comfort — I could nearly be satisfied — with that side 
of the things that came to me. We do not, any of 
us, stay always wound up to our highest, or hold at 
the most intense and painful strain. The spring be- 
gins to relax the moment the key has taken the last 
turn. Some homely comfort comes close upon — in 
the very midst of — the sharpest suffering. And I 
had not deeply suffered, except from self-blame. I 
had only come near enough a joy to see it, and to see 
that it was not mine. It was after the same negative 
fashion that all the pain of my life had been. Things 
were withheld. There was something in me that man- 
aged to take pleasure in such things as I had: I liked 
the tidiness after the spring-cleaning; the cosiness of 
afternoon work; Lucretia’s exquisitely fresh and nice 
kitchen, and the sunshine streaming in, when I went 


WINTER DAYS. 


861 


there after the morning’s cleaning up, to beat eggs for 
cakes or puddings; the loud readings in new books 
to Uncle Royle; Aunt Ildy’s gruff graciousness and 
strong dependableness; the feeling that, in my way, 
I had grown to be somebody at last ; the thought of 
June days at the farm again, and of Hope’s sisterly 
companionship by and by. 

There were other things in the world ; I might have 
held a far greater gladness; but a piece of me was 
somehow glad to he comfortable in these. 

It was not as though I had begun differently ; I had 
been used all my life to the next best; to the mak- 
ing-do; to the dolls with eyes that would not shut, 
and the seat by the high window with the half-lookout. 
The possibilities that had touched me, and that I might 
not seize, began to seem far off and long ago. The 
strange thing would have been to me if they had really 
become mine. 

I think I was always good at giving up, when it was 
once hopeless that I should have. Only I liked to go 
quite away from that which had been denied me into 
something else. 

I was very glad of this new plan of Hope’s. 

It was just what was needed in the cup of our daily 
living ; Miss Chism knew it as well as anybody. 
Something sweet and gracious should so mix itself with, 
and turn to a smooth deliciousness, what else for very 
strength and goodness might have been harsh and 
acrid. 

Hope was always cream to Aunt Ildy’s coffee. 


CHAPTER XXIV. 

WHAT A VOICE TELLS 
OF THAT WHICH MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

Hope Devine had begun to see it coming, — had 
begun to discern what this might lead to, — this stay- 
ing on and quiet comforting. 

She did not care what people said, about its being 
queer. She knew it was really no queerer now than 
it had ever been. She would not even have cared, 
perhaps,- if they had said — very likely some of them 
did say — that “Hope Devine knew pretty well what 
she was about ; it was easy to see what the upshot of 
all that would have to be.” She would not have cared 
while Richard sorely needed her, or if it had still been 
the best for him. 

But when she saw this coming, — this that she did 
see with her far-off, sensitive perception, — this mis- 
apjirehension of himself that Richard might fall into, 
— she said quickly, in her heart, so quickly that it 
was not even heroism, — “No! That would not be 
true. That must not ever happen.” And then she 
began to think about going away; and she said to 
Miss Chism, that day, what Anstiss Dolbeare has told. 

It was June now; they would he coming soon; that 
was the best safety for all. 

Hope never doubted, with her loving onsight, that 
what she believed to be the truth was yet to come to 
pass. I think Hope really loved the truth, — what- 
ever she could “ see clear, ” — and its coming to pass 
in God’s gracious order, better than any wish or will 
of her own. No wish of hers could ripen against such 


WHAT A VOICE TELLS. 


363 


clear-seeing, or bear the bitter fruit of selfish pain. 
Not any more, as she had said, than she could take to 
herself that which was not her own. She was not he- 
roic in this thing, simply because she was, by her high, 
pure nature, so far above heroism. Truly, they who 
lose their life for His sake, shall save it. 

Richard Hathaway, in his silent fashion, was busy 
with himself. He -had “taken back,” grandly and 
generously, that which had been only pain and surprise 
to Anstiss Dolbeare; though he took back with it, 
into his own heart, a dead hope, grown, to this death 
only, out of all the years of his life. He meant to 
be simple-friendly again, and always. 

She was coming, this bright June weather, to the 
farm once more, in the old way. 

But before that, he began to feel with a secret rest- 
lessness, that was partly self-distrust, and partly a 
longing out of his home and heart need, that there was 
something which perhaps he had better do. Some- 
thing that would be fair to Hope ; something in which 
an honest, tender affection for her mingled with the 
deep love for his dead mother, and his hallowing of 
her wishes for him ; something that should give to his 
loneliness a life-long comfort and peace. 

She was his dear little friend, always; she had 
stood by him through it all. Did not God mean it 
for them both ? 

Besides, he cared for in his manly, gentle consider- 
ation, in Hope’s behalf, that which she disregarded, 
for his sake, on her own. 

People should not talk about Hope Devine. 

And this was all the home she had. 

It was beautifully pleasant, all over the farm, and 
in the house. The fields were ploughed, and har- 
rowed, and sown. The slopes of the farther hill- 
plantings were crimped in faultless brown furrows. 


364 


HITHERTO. 


The young grain was vivid in green light, like a shin- 
ing rohe, — like nothing but the robe of life that 
shames our dead weavings, and shows us how the Lord 
knows how to clothe, out of the soul itself that He 
puts into things; how our own outgrowth shall clothe 
us by and by. 

Every leaf was clean and new ; the brook was glad 
with a new gladness, as of drops that had never been 
there before, yet of a gathered whole that knew itself 
the same, and knew also its old, beautiful pathways. 

In the house was New England summer freshness. 
Every valance, and tester, and flounce, and window- 
drapery was white and fragrant with cleanliness. 
Every carpet w^as bright with a fresh face. Every 
table and chair was polished to a smile. It was pleas- 
ant just to move about among it all, and touch the 
vspotlessness with the ends of one’s fingers. 

It was pleasant to Hope, who had managed it all, 
coming out after the early tea to the great doorstone 
under the young, sweet, breathing shade. 

Richard came across the hall with his weekly news- 
paper in his hand, that he had brought that afternoon 
from the office. 

Hope’s happy face, and the light in her softly 
stirred hair, and her pretty figure, full, even in repose, 
of the same springing something that was in hough and 
leaf and breeze, stopped him. He hardly ever went 
by Hope without some word. 

She turned as he came up. 

“ Busy little woman ! ” he said, in a fond, praising 
way. 

“Not busy now, Richard. It ’s all finished. Just 
as — it always was. It seems, somehow, as if she 
was in the summer pleasantness, doesn’t it? ” 

“Hope — you have never let her go! You have 
kept the feeling of her near, in everything. You 


WHAT A VOICE TELLS. 365 

don’t know how I thank you, every day. With all 
my heart, Hope ! ” 

“I am glad I stayed. It will begin to be easier 
now.” 

It was the first time Hope had ever alluded to any 
question of her staying. If there had been a question 
at the beginning, she could not have remained. 

For this reason it startled Richard now. 

He laid his paper down upon the hall chair by the 
door, and came out, nearer to her; came and stood at 
her side. 

Something very earnest looked out of his true, kind 
eyes. 

“Hope,” he said, “you will have to stay here al- 
ways. I cannot do without you. I want — I 
wish ” — 

“Richard,” interrupted Hope, with her quickest 
word and smile', . and her simple, rippling monosylla- 
bles, “you want me to do just right. I canH stay 
here all the time, you know. I could n’t go and 
leave you then ; but now — > I must go soon, Richard ; 
but I shan’t go far; and I shall come and see you, 
and stay and help sometimes. Don’t say one word, 
Richard, please; it must he; I know it ought, and 
my word’s given.” 

What word? Who could there be? Where was 
Hope going? The suddenness, and the puzzle of it, 
stopped what he might have said at the moment, and 
when he began, — 

“Hope, I can’t see. I don’t understand. I meant 
to ask you, Hope ” — 

Hope interrupted again. She was like a little 
breeze of pure, bright air that came and blew away his 
words before he could get them ranged in a sentence. 

“It ’s an ought., Richard. It will be best that I 
should go away. Your life will come all right, — 


366 


HITHERTO. 


Tighter than if — anybody — stayed and did too much, 
you see. You are so true, Richard; you have always 
kept one thought so, for so long; you have never let 
anything come between, and you never will ; you have 
such a steadfast heart; it is so right that it should 
come to be for you, Richard, that it will. I feel sure 
it will. And then, I shall be so glad all my life, that 
I did not let any little help of mine, that you might 
have leaned on more or longer than you meant, come 
in the way. And now, let me tell you what my plan 
is. I am going to Miss Chism. She wants me. Mr. 
Royle is getting old; and Miss Ildy is n’t young, or 
so strong, I think, as she was. And I think — when 
once I am there — it will begin to come all right, for 
everybody. It seems to me I can see just what God 
means by it. Why, Richard, sometimes He does lead 
us, just a little way, in a path we can see on in ; or 
He puts some new light in our eyes for a while, and 
then we have part of his own joy, helping to bring his 
work to pass. I have looked and looked at it; and I 
see it clear. I think I do.” 

Richard could no more have gone on with what he 
had begun to say than if it had been an angel from 
heaven, instead of a mortal woman, who stood there by 
his side. It seemed almost as if she did come to him, 
with the very word of the Lord, as the angels came in 
visions of old. And with what she said, — with her 
bright, sure prophecy of what was to be for him, — 
something stirred so in his own heart, something so 
sprang to meet the hope she gave, that he knew not 
only that all was not dead, but that nothing of it could 
ever die ; that in his soul he was true, as Hope said ; 
steadfast to the old thought and the one love ; and that 
it would have been a mistake and a wrong if he had 
said the words she stopped upon his lips. 

They stood there, man and woman, at the threshold 


WHAT A VOICE TELLS. 


367 


of a life that might have been; tenderness, each for 
the other, in their hearts; comfort, that each could 
give, waiting ; a feeling of need and longing, real and 
conscious to them both; yet truth stronger than any- 
thing; patience for God’s way and time chosen in the 
stead of their own impulsive and precipitate will. 
And Hope — the woman — to whom the gift came — 
did this, and put the gift away; put it away without 
ever looking at it, so that in after time she might have 
had any blessed moment to think of, of which she 
could have said. Then it was mine. She had never 
looked at this thing, that she might have desired, long 
enough to be tempted. From the beginning it had 
been decided away from her. It belonged to some one 
else. 

So she should go her way, unscathed ; her eyes still 
touched with the clear, glad light; her hand in God’s. 

It was a deep, beautiful, holy moment to them 
both, — a moment they would remember all their 
earthly lives, and that should come back to them in 
the time beyond, when all things shall come back and 
be present, except repented and forgiven sin. 

They sat down, together, there on the great door- 
stone. In the June sunset, under the sweet, swinging 
boughs. They sat there silently, with thoughts in 
their hearts that were like prayers. The evening star 
came out in the midst of the western glory, and glim- 
mered high up thi’ough the delicate fretwork the young 
boughs made against the sky. 

Hope knew there was no danger; that there never 
would be, any more ; that God had given her a better 
thing than love to keep, — a love to give away. 

Richard Hathaway felt himself near all blessed and 
beneficent presences, in the presence of that woman- 
friend beside him. The Father’s care, — his great, 
rich meanings for him, — the wide To-be, in which all 


368 


HITHERTO. 


waited; the gentle pulse of the invisible mother-love, 
beating near him in the all-holding peace and promise ; 
the steadfast truth that was in him, that had been 
saved to him, clear and clean, to live on and claim the 
answer and accord that are surely somewhere for all 
steadfastness and truth, — an unspeakable fullness of 
all these lifted and enlarged his consciousness into a 
grandeur and a blessedness he could not have told of ; 
that only overswept him and held him there, under 
the summer-evening heaven, and at Hope’s side. 

They stayed there, saying not one other word, until 
the beautiful planet shone all golden from a sea of 
blue, — the sunset splendor gathered slowly, as it 
were, into its one point of changeless light, — and 
down upon the earth had fallen the tender gloom that 
is like the shadow of a shielding Hand; until the few 
still sounds were stiller yet, and the violet perfume 
came up richer through the evening dew, and a cooler 
breath began to search the green tree chambers. 

Then Richard got up and held out his hand to Hope, 
taking hers with a strong, fervent grasp. 

“I thank you, Hope,” he said, “for one of the best 
hours of all my life.” 

And Hope was thanked. 

Away back in the house, moving to and fro between 
tea-room and pantry and kitchen, Martha had caught 
glimpses of the two sitting out there together. 

^^That ain’t no millstone,” she said, with three or 
four measured, decided nods of her head. “There 
ain’t no credit in seein’ through that. But ef there 
was, I done it, I guess, pretty much, even, afore they 
did. They can’t come tellin’ me any o’ their news.” 


CHAPTER XXV. 


OUT AT THE LEDGES. 

It led to my being back and forth at the farm 
again, as of old. 

Richard was so quiet and so kind. It was not as if 
he had looked pained and sad, or had been constrained 
with me. It did not seem a hard thing for him to 
have us there. It was just the old, plain, cordial 
way; it did him good, he told Aunt Ildy, to have 
people in the house again. 

He liked home pleasantness so. That was it. I 
thought that if any other woman had come in his way 
just as I did, it would have been the same. That it 
would be the same again, with somebody else; perhaps 
with Hope. 

Hope came home with us after that June visit. 
Uncle Royle was better, and was busy in his shop 
again. But he took more relaxation, and this sum- 
mer he bought a horse and a light wagon, and nearly 
every pleasant day he took a drive. Very often it 
was out to the farm; and so some of us came to be 
there at least two or three times a week, always. 

Now that I was left to myself, and something of 
peace had come back to me, seeing that apparently, 
according to Aunt Ildy’s word, the chance was already 
more than even that “ they would both get over it, ” I 
began to feel how great a part of my life would have 
gone from me if that intercourse with the farm had 
ceased. How Richard Hathaway held some certain 
place with me, that I could never spare him from; 
that he answered, as he had done during my childhood. 


370 


HITHEBTO. 


one great need for me ; he gave me simple rest, — the 
rest of perfect reliance. 

Sometimes I thought if I only could have given him 
a little more, when he asked it, what a sure, peaceful, 
tenderly-cared-for life mine would have been to its 
very end, with him. How happy some other woman, 
just a little different from me, could be at Broadfields. 

And then I wondered, whether, in such case, the 
old friendship would still be there for me. It is hard 
for a woman, — and from the way of the world such 
alternative not seldom comes to her, — when she must 
either marry or lose a man ; take him for a husband, 
or lose him for a friend, practically; losing all the 
near opportunities of friendship. 

If it were Hope, — but what if it should not be 
she ? What if some stranger were to come there all at 
once, caring for none of us ? I thought I should be 
jealous of such a love as that in Richard. Jealous 
with that quiet, wonted home side of my heart, as I 
had been with the more restless, asking part of me, of 
Augusta Hare. 

I think I understood myself less and less in those 
days. It seemed as if there were capacity in me for 
two separate, utterly distinct and different lives; that 
I might live either, if the other were never touched or 
awakened ; but what was I to do between them both ? 
Between the two sides of me that could not be both 
lived out ? 

Mr. and Mrs. Grandon Cope were at home for a 
little while in the early summer; then they went away 
to the White Mountains, and to Niagara. Whenever 
I saw Augusta, she was as kind as ever; but the inde- 
scribable change of marriage had come over her; she 
was Mrs. Grandon Cope. Her life, — their lives, — 
taking up their own, had left me out, as it were, and 
further off. Safer so ; I was not near enough to be 


OUT AT THE LEDGES. 


371 


troubled ; it had only been when I stood, for a little, 
close upon some beautiful, vague possibilities, that 
might gather to vital certainty, and make my world, 
that I had been in the chaotic pain. The certainty 
had gathered itself, and^t was not mine; it rolled 
away upon its own bright orbit that seldom intersected 
mine, and left me to a kind of uncreated stillness for 
a time ; the elements of my fate yet waited. 

I never cried for far-ofP and impossible things; I 
reacted quickly from all acute disappointment, as far 
at least as a passive dreariness. Because I was capa- 
ble of too keen suffering, if once I let myself begin 
to suffer. I wondered, in those days, how people gave 
themselves up to pain and grief ; it seemed to me it 
could be only in the shallows of misery; in the deep 
sea, one must either sink or swim. 

Aunt Ildy had a quilt to be made ; she had saved 
some woolen strips, too, for braided mats ; that took 
us all out one day to the Polisher girlses. 

It was August now; it was sultry and close in the 
town; out here, in this wide, rolling sea of green, 
among these little hills like softly rounded waves fixed 
at their most beautiful heaving, there was a wider 
breath and a wonderful sweetness. The dry, perfumy 
air, full of the woods and pastures ; the notes of birds, 
not crowded into a single orchard, hemmed about with 
highways and human noise, but answering each other 
from green, distant depths that seemed infinite every 
way ; the high sun in a great, pure sky that you could 
see from level rim to rim of the far-reaching woodland 
undulations, — it was as lovely, and as different from 
all else, as ever. 

I had thought of the Polisher girls and their home, 
instinctively, last year, when I felt as if I wanted a 
place to run to. 

I had never forgotten the peculiar outstretch and re- 


872 


HITHERTO. 


lief of that still, wide, verdant horizon, or the quaint, 
homely charm of the old house. It was more than a 
change of place and outlook to come there ; it was go- 
ing hack in time ; taking refuge in a generation passed 
away into its peace; gettiag behind one’s self and 
one’s perplexities, into the years when they were not 
horn. 

“I wish I could stay here a week,” I exclaimed 
impulsively, standing with Aunt Ildy on the threshold. 

“You can as well as not,” said Lodemy Polisher, 
with blithe alacrity. “Why won’t you, now?” 

“ Anstiss Dolbeare ! ” said my aunt, with two-syl- 
lahled awfulness. “That is just like you! I am 
amazed I ” 

She was so awful, that her little inconsistency es- 
caped her own notice. 

“I did not mean to invite myself,” I answered. 
“I only meant how very, very pleasant it was.” 

“Why didn’t you just say, then,” said Miss Chism, 
with grand, monotonous deliberation, “how very, very 
pleasant it was? Only other folks can see it, without 
your telling.” 

Miss Chism was all Chism when the proprieties were 
invaded. Little, easy, social freedoms were what she 
could not tolerate. 

Nevertheless, it came to our spending the day there, 
a week or two later; a long August day, that ended 
— I shall put down in its place how it ended ; the be- 
ginning and the going on are very pleasant to remem- 
ber; and how good it is that both ends of a day, or a 
year, never do come together; no, nor both ends, nor 
any confusing, counteracting points of a lifetime! 

Richard Hathaway brought us the invitation. One 
of the Polisher girls had been over, to bring Martha 
a basket of such huckleberries as came from nowhere 
but the wild pastures hack of their little farmstead. 


OUT AT THE LEDGES. 373 

among the green billows of that beautiful, solitary- 
country-side. 

As big as green grapes, everyone of ’em,” Lo- 
demy said ; not specifying at what stage of the grape 
growth, but probably the contemporary. Black and 
shining with rich, distending juice; firm and perfect; 
it was such a pleasure to plunge one’s hand deep into 
the full basket, and to eat them out of one’s palm; 
new wine of the summer, in new skins, — fern flavored, 
aromatic, — one swallowed from their sweet, crushed 
globes. 

Lodemy, and all of them, wanted us — Hope and 
me — to come out and spend the day, and gather for 
ourselves, to • bring home ; and the quilt, also, would 
be ready. Next Thursday, would we? Come bright 
and early, and do our picking before the sun got hot. 

What a way we have of saying that, as if the great 
Glory gathered radiance and intensity as we wheel our 
little meridian toward him ! Even in like manner we 
talk also of the Love that waits and burns in heaven 
for our slow turning! 

Aunt Ildy would be glad of the berries; we were 
glad of the picking. So we had the horse and wagon, 
and drove ourselves over, on the Thursday, stopping at 
the farm with a message for Martha, and getting a 
pleasant word with Richard, standing in his white 
shirt-sleeves by the gate. He walked up from his 
meadow-haying when he saw us coming round the bend, 
and brought in his hand a bunch of splendid scarlet 
cardinals. 

They were as becoming to him as they could be to a 
woman, as he stood there in his fresh white linen, — 
somehow Richard Hathaway had a marvelous way of 
keeping himself unspotted, even in his homeliest labors, 
— his hands crossed, as he rested his arms lightly on 
the gate-rail, the long, brilliant, plumy spikes slanting 


374 


HITHEBTO. 


across his sleeve, his brown, handsome face with the 
summer glow in it, and the dark hair all in a summer 
toss about his temples under the deep-brimmed straw 
hat. 

He gave the flowers to me when we started on again. 
Richard always had a way of bringing flowers to me, — 
he had it with his mother, too, — flowers of the first 
finding; violets or roses, or the midsummer magnifi- 
cence of these. They came with a quiet little tender- 
ness about them, as of a thought had of us in the still, 
pleasant places where he met their beautiful surprise. 
It was one of the things that touched me very much in 
the ways of Richard Hathaway; it touched me more 
now, that he had not changed or forgotten it with me, 
for all that had come and gone. It is so good to have 
a friend in the world. 

It was eight o’clock when we reached the Polisher 
girlses. Already there was hardly a breath in the 
still, sultry air. There had been this still, intense 
weather, — not a drop of rain falling, only the heavy 
night-dews keeping things alive, — for two or three 
weeks. The wayside slu’ubs were dusty, the brooks 
ran low in their pebbly channels ; out there, though, 
was the same green depth, sheltered in its own close 
growth, and fed by unseen, numberless springs. Up 
on the slopes against the southerly sun stood the high- 
huckleberry-bushes and the tall sweet-ferns, crowding 
the short, crisp swards. 

Miss Remember stood in the doorway, in a thin, 
old-fashioned lawn gown, with a pattern of slender, 
long-branched, briery vines running widely over it; 
cool and soft with many summers’ wear. Miss Sub- 
mit looked over her shoulder in a fine-striped lilac 
gingham; and Demie and Frasie came hastening from 
the back door, where, on their dear, beautiful stoop, 
doubtless, they had been shelling beans, less imagi- 
nary, for dinner. 


OUT AT THE LEDGES. 


375 


Demie’s calico had little brown thistles on it, and 
Frasie’s pale pink pinks. They were made with loose 
front breadths, in a fashion of ever so long ago, with 
bishop’s sleeves, and were tied round the waist with 
strings of the same, fastened in bow-knots in front. 
Frasie’s had three more bows at long intervals down 
before, tying the open gown together over a white dim- 
ity petticoat. These two always dressed a little younger 
than the others, and Frasie was the most “ tasty, ” they 
all acknowledged, of the four. So she had prescriptive 
right to the three little extra calico bows. 

All their robes were worn to delicate thinness with 
age and much care and many foldings; such things, 
when you do see them nowadays, come out with a more 
especial fitness and reminding ; they have seen so much 
just such hot weather before ; they have been conse- 
crated to it, and used for nothing else. They are like 
flags on the Fourth of July; they are put on with a 
touch and appropriation of personal importance in the 
observance of this grand achieving and climax of the 
year. People are always a little proud, somehow, of 
very hot weather. One’s planet — one’s own part of 
it, at least — is doing her utmost. 

We went out with Lodemy and Frasie to the little 
green. They gave us low, splint-bottomed chairs, out 
on the grass, and Hope and I fell to work with them 
at finishing the bean-podding. 

“It is so nice out here,” said Hope. 

She remembered all the fancies that had grown so 
real to them, and she commended in her words the 
whole pleasantness they sat in, that they had builded 
round them. It was there, to her, as much as to them. 
Hope did not wait, any more than they, for carpen- 
ter’s work. 

It was nice, however, presently and positively. For 
myself, I hardly knew what they wanted the stoop for. 


376 


HITHERTO. 


The greensward was lovely, and the sun got round 
away from it early in the day, and you could sit there 
looking off into the bosom of pine shadows, and from 
brow to brow of the gently rising and dipping land. 

“I ’most wish we ’d had flat trellises instead of 
round posts,” said Frasie. “But we can’t alter ’em 
now, and they don’t take up much room.” 

They certainly did not ; though the “ girls ” had 
planted actual morning-glories and Madeira vines in 
round plats just where the porch outline and the sup- 
ports would have been. These climbed up rough poles, 
set for them as for garden vines ; and from the tops 
were drawn some strings and wires up to the chamber 
windows. 

“I was n’t going to have folks walking right 
straight through our columeSy at any rate, as if they 
were ghosts,” said Lodemy. “I couldn’t stand that, 
it nettled me so.” 

“’Member says it’s clear nonsense; she thinks 
we ’re two great babies; and we don’t tell her half,” 
said Frasie. 

“Babies never do,” said Hope. Hope had great 
faith in what babies might tell if they would. 

“We couldn’t if we tried,” said Lodemy. “We 
can’t tell half to ourselves. Clear nonsense is a great 
plenty. There ’s nothing to stop you, you know.” 

“ Why, clear nonsense is a beautiful thing ! ” ex- 
claimed Hope. “I’ve just noticed what it really 
means. Clear nonsense is just what heaven is made 
of.” 

“Frasie wovld have grapevines on this west side,” 
said Lodemy; “but they keep out the sunset. Grape- 
vines grow so all-over, in ten years, you see. And 
it ’s ten years and more, since we first planned it out.” 

Now there was no grapevine on the west side, only 
an old settee, on which Lodemy and Frasie were now 


OUT AT THE LEDGES. 


377 


sitting, with their heels upon the rung, and their tin 
pans in their laps. This, however, kept people from 
“walking through,” and defined their idea. 

“I should trim it away,” said Hope. “I should 
cut out a great, wide, arched window, and let the sun- 
set in.” 

“Why, yes, indeed,” cried Frasie. “Why ever 
did n’t you think of that, Lodemy, instead of always 
blaming me ? ” 

“Well, there now! Sure enough! So I will!” 
And Lodemy Polisher did half spring off her seat, and 
spill over her beans into the grass, as if she were go- 
ing instantly for shears. She sat down again, how- 
ever, and shelled away in a very busy silence, during 
which I could almost hear the clip of the blades, so 
sure was I that the grape-branches were coming down, 
— in that “clear nonsense ” realm where these Polisher 
girls wrought out so much. 

“I do wish ’Member would have tea out here to- 
night. When she and Mittie are away, Frasie and I 
always do. But that’ s hardly ever more than once a 
month, you see, — sewing-meeting days; and that only 
makes three or four chances in a summer.” 

That was the first thing Lodemy said, after her si- 
lence. Plainly, she wanted to try how the sunset 
would seem, now that it was let in. I suppose she 
had ignored its beauty, from this place, consistently 
and conscientiously, for years. Now, she could fairly 
look it in the glorious face again. 

Submit came out, just as we were gathering up the 
last stray bean-pods into the pan. 

“ ’Member says we ought to be going, ” she said. 

Submit always played second part to Remember, all 
through the family economy. How they ever missed 
her appropriate diminutive, and came to use the sec- 
ond syllable of her name instead, occurred to puzzle 


378 


HITHERTO. 


me already. From this day forth, she was always 
“ Sub ” to me, and I found it a difficult deliberation 
to put the “Miss ” and the “mit ” at either end when 
I spoke to her. 

“And she wants to know if you ’ve got barks 
enough? ” she added. 

Lodemy answered by going to a deep drawer in a 
high mahogany chest, resplendent with many pendent 
brass handles, which filled up one end of the narrow 
room that opened uiDon the “stoop,” and producing 
thence, one after another, five “barks ” and a little 
deep, long-handled basket. The barks were quart 
measures, made of white birch, neatly sewed into the 
ordinary shape, and provided with loops at the top, 
through which a string was passed, to tie it round the 
waist in picking, that hoth hands might be left free 
for the bushes. Each sister had her own particular 
bark, and there was one over for company. Lodemy 
lent me hers, and took the little basket. 

Two large peck baskets, which we were to bring 
home full, completed the equipment. The uniform of 
the party consisted of sunbonnets, — calico tunnels, 
framed on stiff strips of pasteboard of precisely equal 
width, and capable of being folded flat, to put away, 
or of having their bones drawn, for the washing and 
starching process. There were plenty of these, for 
they always made one when they had a remnant of 
calico of the right size; they were “so handy.” Into 
their farther ends we dropped our heads ; after which 
we could only look at each other by carefully bringing 
two cylinders in line, and waiting a second or so to 
accustom our eyes to the depth, and then, presently, a 
face could be discerned, exactly fitted in, at the bot- 
tom of either. The advantage was that the all-seeing 
sun himself could no more easily get at us, — hence, 
“sunbonnets.” We saw Nature in scraps; like a 


OUT AT THE LEDGES. 


379 


great picture looked at piecemeal through a tin tube; 
which of course brought out and intensified what we 
did look at, very much indeed. 

Oh, how sweet it was among the huckleberry- 
bushes! How the ferns sent up their spiciness from 
under our feet and against our garments, as we pressed 
through them I And how dry the mossy turf was, and 
warm with the long-lying sun! How the rich black 
globes rolled from our fingers’ ends, at the merest 
touch, into our suspended barks! There would be no 
need of stemming afterwards; we kept them clean as 
we went along. 

Remember picked severely, never eating one. That 
was the way she went through her life, laying up all 
her joy for a pie that was to be baked by and by. 
Submit did as she did ; Lodemy and Frasie took a lit- 
tle of theirs as they went along. So did Hope. She 
ate more, and gathered more, than any of us. She 
kept time with Mittie and ’Member in pouring into 
the big basket ; bark for bark she brought in ; yet her 
pretty lips were all purple-stained with their sweet 
present pleasure. 

I worked in company with the younger Polisher 
girls; we did not fill up so quickly. I could not keep 
still and satisfied enough; it was too often “over 
there ” with me ; I lost time in struggling^ from bush 
to bush. Hope always found a good place, and always 
got all there was; she was never in a hurry to look 
for more ; she had scarcely shifted her position three 
yards since she began. She kept more cool and com- 
fortable than we did, too; she found little sitting and 
kneeling places under the high, loaded bushes, and 
just coaxed down, with easy touches, her fingers play- 
ing all about among the stems, the ready fruit into 
her bark. 

“ How could I help it ? It was all right there, ” 


380 


HITHERTO. 


she would say, when we wondered at her full mea- 
sure. 

I read lessons, that day, — out in the sweet-smell- 
ing pasture, — lessons over again that I had read be- 
fore. 

It grew stiller and stiller. There was a dim, hot 
haze in the sky. The sun climbed up, and up, and 
the earth lay breathless under his glory. 

We kept in the edge of the pasture, near the black- 
green shade of the pines. A little spring trickled 
patiently just within our hearing. 

“That is exactly behind my house,” whispered 
Frasie furtively. “It never fails. It ’s living water. 
My dairy’s there; and I’ve a cream-colored cow 
that gives fifteen quarts of milk.” 

“There ’s a little brook runs down by my garden,” 
said Lodemy. “And there are lilies and water- 
cresses.” 

“We shall have thunder this afternoon,” said ’Mem- 
ber, coming over to us. “See those brassy heads, low 
down in the south. When the wind comes, they ’ll 
blow up. Then the air ’ll he cooler.” 

“It’s awful now,” said Lodemy; and she pushed 
back her sunhonnet, and showed a face that, as to the 
mouth, was violet-black with huckleberry- juice, and 
as to the rest was royal purj^le. 

“Lodemy Polisher!” cried ’Member. “You set 
right still where you are, and don’t stir another inch 
till you cool off! You ’ll have arrysippleous just as 
true as you ’re a born child ! ” 

Then she went round from one to another, making 
observations down each calico well, finding the truth 
at the bottom, in various shades of illustration, that it 
was growing far too hot to pick huckleberries any 
longer. 

“ Set down and rest, every one of you, ” she com- 


OUT AT THE LEDGES. 381 

manded; and Submit went down instantly, just where 
she was, in a flat, sunny space, full in the broil. 

“Back here, Mittie, under the trees! Are you 
crazed and possessed ? ” cried Remember, marshaling 
and ordering as she might have done when they went 
huckleberrying fifty years before, and the younger ones 
obeying; till she got us all into the shade, where we 
leaned upon the turfy knolls that curled themselves for 
luxurious rest all up the easy slope, and listened to 
the hot, shrill whirr of the locust, and the cool little 
drip of the spring. 

We took little naps there, every one of us; not all 
at once, or confessedly ; but between times ; each one 
in turn waking up enough to speak, and to keep up the 
general pretense of consciousness by a lazy struggle of 
talk. Then, after a while, Lodemy’s face having sub- 
sided to its normal mode color, we took up the peck 
baskets between us, and straggled slowly home. 

How nice the dinner was in the shady back room ! 
Only a tea-dinner; the beans we had shelled mixed 
into delicious succotash with the sweetest corn and new 
churned butter; huckleberry pies, of yesterday’s gath- 
ering and baking, made in deep dishes, with inverted 
teacups to hold the rich, splendid colored syrup; but- 
termilk bread, toothsome and tender, golden pound- 
cake, and crisp brown doughnuts, and creamy sage- 
cheese, and fragrant tea, drawn in the time-honored 
black earthen teapot that alone draws perfect tea. 

It grew cooler while we ate; the wind began to sigh 
up from the south, and a shade to come over the sky. 
The locusts left off their rattle, as if they expected 
something else to speak. Once or twice there was a 
faint, far-off thrill of thunder. 

Miss Remember went out to the front door when 
we got up from table. Away out over the woodlands, 
the trees were turning up white undersides of leaves 


382 


HITHERTO. 


to the asking air. There was a bank of magnificent 
clouds in the south, definitely formed now, with great 
curling tops. 

“The thunder-heads are rising,” said Remember, 
coming in. 

“We get pretty much the heft of the storms, out 
here among the rocks,” said Lodemy. “All under 
that huckleberry lot is clear granite ledge ; and granite 
draws the lightning. We ’re high up, too. There ’s 
nothing but Pitch Hill and Red Rock, that ’s any 
higher, for ten miles round.” 

“What do you talk that way for, Demie, before 
the children? Anstiss’ face is as white as a sheet, 
now. The shower ’ll go round, just as like as not.” 

I tried not to mind; perhaps the shower would go 
round; but I felt my face pale, and the sick thrill 
running through heart and nerves that thunder in the 
air always gave me. I tried to think of the little 
birds in their nests, and of how many safe places the 
great clouds would sweep over and leave green, un- 
touched. But all my life long I should never quite 
overgrow the horror that came so close to me out of 
the blackness and blaze, that night, outside the Copes’ 
shut door. 

We went ujDstairs. The Polisher girls were used to 
a little nap after dinner. The two large, opposite 
front rooms were open across to each other. Hope 
went into the elder ladies’ apartment; they were go- 
ing to teach her the shell-pattern for knitting. Miss 
Frasie took me with her; brought out of a dark corner 
cupboard some volumes of “Persuasion” and “North- 
anger Abbey, ” and put me into the great white easy- 
chair to read. 

Then she folded down the smooth bedquilt, laid an 
old shawl across the lower end for their feet, turned up 
the night side of the pillows, and she and Demie pre- 


OUT AT THE LEDGES. 


383 


pared to mount. This they had to do by agreement, 
and with military precision, so as not to “roll ” the 
bed. 

First, they got crickets, upon which they stood at 
either side. Then, with exact calculation, each put a 
foot up, into the very spot where it was to stay; Miss 
Demie her right foot. Miss Frasie her left ; then with 
a grasp of the bedposts they swung themselves up, — 
right and left face, the nice point here being not to 
bump their heads as they met aloft, and then they sat 
and finally reclined, everything turning out with the 
marvelous precision that could only come of perfect 
plan and long usage. Upon which, each sister said 
“ There ! ” with a satisfied breath of accomplishment 
and giving up, which was a part of the performance 
and a beginning of repose. I suppose they had done 
just so for forty years. 

Something in the idea of this, beside the funniness, 
diverted my nervousness, and gave me that sort of 
unreasoning confidence which we pick up against our 
fears in things that have been just so for ever so long. 
It had probably rained and lightened many a summer 
afternoon when they had as calmly and regularly done 
this; they had had their nap, the storm had poured 
itself out and cleared away, and they had got up 
unharmed and gone down and made tea. 

Also there was a drifting of clouds along the hori- 
zon, and a sunbreak overhead, which at this moment 
encouraged my faith in the possibility that the showers 
would “go about.” About, to somebody else, perhaps, 
as afraid of them as I. Over the round world the 
tempests must break somewhere. 

I even took courage to go across into Miss Remem- 
ber’s room before they all quite quieted down, to beg 
a set of knitting-needles and to look at Hope’s stitch. 
We meant to make a quilt at our odd minutes, as a 


384 


HITHERTO. 


birthday present for Aunt Ildy. Hope had finished a 
shell, and lent it to me for a pattern. I went softly 
back to my easy-chair, and the whole house hushed up. 

There was a great hush out of doors, too. The 
brief southerly stir in the air was over. Only some 
unfelt upper current swayed the drifting clouds, whose 
masses crept slowly higher up over the heaven. I 
would not look to see how high they were. The sun 
went in, and a shadow lay on everything. But that 
there does when a fleece of a hand’s breadth crosses 
its disk. 

I knitted back and forth, — three purl and tlmee 
plain, — making my widenings at the corners. 

Miss Lodemy and Miss Frasie were asleep, their 
feet resting in the selfsame hollows they had made in 
climbing up, just one dint in each pillow under the 
head that had not moved; when they got up there 
would be two perfect prints of human figures, as of 
two fossils in a rock. 

The far-off white tops of the woods were bending 
this way. The wind was coming up again. 

Then pale shivers ran along the tall grass, swaying 
in its turn. 

It grew darker and darker. 

A faint gleam — I could hardly tell whether it were 
a sensation in my eyes only, or a flickering about my 
needles — came and went. It was just long enough to 
feel. 

Is there anything more like spirit than the waking 
out of the slumbering air of this shining mystery ? 

. Thunder muttered low. It was still far off, appar- 
ently. But how close the darkness grew ! 

A flash came, by and by, quite golden and distinct. 
It seemed to fling its pennon across me, through the 
room, and seize it back again, into the murk without. 

I threw my needles under the bed. 


OUT AT THE LEDGES. 


385 

Still Hope said nothing, and nobody moved. I 
would try not to be childish. As I thought this, came 
the challenge of the thunder, uttering in tone what had 
been telegraphed in light. Heavy, — turning itself in 
great globes of sound along the sky, — these bursting 
and pouring out a hurtling of minor, sharper crashes, 
like canister shot. 

Then I stood up, noiselessly, on my feet. Still the 
Polisher girls slept on. 

I never saw a day- darkness like that which gathered 
then. It seemed to be let down upon us, fold upon 
fold. It settled like a weight upon the housetop. It 
was like a pall across the chimneys. 

Then I saw what I have never seen before or since. 

The air grew incandescent. 

Little crackles of fire sprang out in the gloom of the 
room. They shot and hissed here and there. 

Not the noise, — for as yet there had been but that 
first peal, — but the presence^ waked them. The Pol- 
isher girls sat upright on the bed. When they moved, 
— when I flung myself in terror toward them, — it 
was as if the stir struck out the electric particles afresh 
from the overcharge about us. Between our faces 
sparkled the scintillations. 

We were in the very focus of the storm. 

There came a blue blaze, and a rending of thunder. 
A long, tearing, hurling, reverberating crash, as if 
hills were split and flung apart. The rain poured 
down. 

We were all in a pale huddle in the little passage 
between the rooms. How we all got there we hardly 
knew. And still, among us, hissed and snapped the 
little fiery atoms with which the atmosphere was all 
alive. 

“Come in here!” cried Miss Remember, and 
dragged whoever was nearest her. We hustled down. 


386 


HITHEIiTO. 


over the stair-head, into the dark, middle room. 
Hope jDulled out the bedstead from the wall, and we 
six women heaped ourselves upon it. It was better 
here, where it was always dark, than out there where 
the awful murk had come upon us. 

Over our heads, — under our feet, — beside us, — 
or everywhere, — was that shock and boom and multi- 
plied fulminant crash! 

Where was the lightning? We saiu nothing. 

No blaze; but from the height above our heads to 
the deep beneath, one terrible outburst and downburst ; 
one unspeakable plunging blast of destruction. 

Then smoke — the house full; and a stifle of sul- 
phur. 

We were struck. Yet we were all alive. 

Was the house on fire? Should we be driven out 
into the storm ? Where would the flame burst out ? 

We could only wait, paralyzed. 

Still the pouring smoke; the sickening sulphurous 
smell, and the taint of some burned woolen thing or 
other. A different smell of burning, beside, — burned 
plaster. We could not tell what it all was, then. We 
only sat and trembled, and prayed, without any words. 

For the tempest raged on; and we were still in its 
midst. Great purjDle streams — oceans of flame — 
filled the living air, and flashed through and through 
around us. Heaven and earth were overflowed with 
livid light, and resonant with ceaseless and tremendous 
concussions. 

We saw the small, terrible coruscations no more. 
We forgot to be comforted with that, or to think that 
the awful equilibrium was perhaps, for us, regained. 

We cowered, and wondered whether God could mean 
to make us die, and not have taken us in that first 
fearful threatening and close-coming of his power. 

Still we sup2)osed the house must be burning, some- 


OUT AT THE LEDGES. 


387 


where. Smouldering slowly, perhaps, in some closet, 
or between the walls, or in some pile of quilts or cloth- 
ing in that garret beyond us, where the lightning, 
doubtless, had passed through. 

Go and look? Try to put it out, if it were there? 

We dared not, — we could not move. All one blaze 
from end to end, through the little four-paned gable 
windows, was that usually dim, rambling space under 
the low rafters, whenever we lifted our eyes. Go 
there, through God’s fierce fires of heaven, to look for 
some stray spark they might have kindled among poor 
rags or timbers? We thought as little of what might 
be left for to-morrow of house or raiment, as we should 
think among the melting elements of the Judgment 
Day. 

Only one earthly thing I did think of, crouching 
there, mute, in the awfulness; it was the one thing 
of earth that does not fall away worthless, with its 
plans and its knowledges, among the fires. I thought 
of the one best love that earth had given me. The 
soul that had an inmost thought for me drew near me 
then. I thought of Richard Hathaway. How sorry 
he would be if he knew! How he would defend and 
comfort me if he could! 

I scarcely thought of the storm as reaching him also ; 
as holding a wide countryside under its cloud and flame 
and terror. It seemed as if it were only right here, 
over our heads, filling and rending this old, lonely 
house. 

Sometimes there would be a little ceasing of the 
lightning, a little dying away and retreating of the 
thunder; a little slow-hushing of the fiercely dashing 
rain. And then we could tell whether the daylight 
were beginning to come back or not. 

“ Does it lift a little ? I think I see more light 
upon the wall.” 


388 


HITHERTO, 


And Hope would say, “It must be lifting some- 
where, you know. Somewhere — west — there is sun- 
shine now; other people are in it. We shall he there, 
too.” 

And then the horrible blackness would roll over 
again, the faint day-gleam on the wall was lost, and 
there were only the leap of the lightning, and the 
tumultuous roar of the thunder, all about us, as they 
had been before. 

Cloud after cloud; hour after hour; the storms 
lasted all through the afternoon. Cramped in every 
limb, we lay and clung together. Hope was quietest ; 
she never clutched or grasped, as we did. When she 
spoke, her voice was so low and deep that it seemed to 
come from some far, solemn shelter away down be- 
neath God’s hand. 

We got used to our terror. We bore it as people 
bear long pain. The sharpness of it died away. It 
seemed to me that I almost forgot what it was ever to 
have felt safe and careless; ever to have gone out and 
in under the sky and seen it blue and sweet. Was all 
this force and fury in it, slumbering, always ? Might 
a bolt come down through the happy air, any time ? 

Did we go out there, among those wild pastures and 
gray, lightning-drawing rocks only this morning, pick- 
ing pleasant fruits ? 

Was that little patient spring trickling there yet, 
among the pines ? 

Suddenly, after a burst that rattled from rim to 
rim of the horizon, a new sound came to us in the in- 
stant of comparative stillness ; new as if we had never 
heard it before. A very small, slender sound; only 
the strike of a horse’s hoofs, galloping over gravel, 
and then their deadened thud upon the wet sod. 

“Hallo!” 

“ Oh, thank God I Richard 1 ” 


OUT AT THE LEDGES. 


389 


He had jumped off, thrown his horse’s bridle round 
a post, and let himself in. I met him on the stairs. 

As he came up, and I went down, — in that mere 
moment of our meeting, he divined the whole. The 
story of all those dreadful three hours was in my white 
face, in my excited gesture toward him as toward a 
refuge, in that sickening, sulphur-mingled smell of 
burned hair and plaster and woolen, still pervading the 
house. From the very front and presence of death I 
came to him, and he knew it. 

“Nansie?” he said tenderly, anxiously, eagerly, 
and reached forward his arms toward me. 

I let myself drop into them as into a safety. I was 
held against the heart that I had felt in the darkness. 
And then he put his face to mine, and kissed me. 

The light was broadening on the wall. That last 
long, wide, rattling roll was the retreat of the tempest. 

“It is all bright in the west,” said Richard. “It 
is all over. ” How glad his voice sounded ! 

Then I began to shiver and tremble. I had been 
all tense with fear before. Now my teeth chattered, 
and I could not speak. 

He brought me up among them all, into Miss Re- 
member’s room; where the yellow light from the 
peaceful west came in. He had his arm still about 
me. 

“Why, I told you so! ” said Hope. And the deep, 
low tone had mounted suddenly to something wonder- 
ful in its clearness. It was like an angel speaking 
down from God now, out of the stilled heaven. 

“I told you there was sunshine somewhere, and we 
should come to it again 1 ” 


CHAPTER XXVI. 


DOWN THE PINE LANE. 

He went all through the house with us. 

Awed, and shrinking, we ventured into room after 
room, where the terrible presence had been. 

It had been behind, beneath us; everywhere, al- 
most, but in that dark, central spot where we had 
taken refuge. 

The bolt had seized the east chimney, where the flue 
was warm from the kitchen fire. On its top it had 
parted, sending one stream down inside, sweeping 
clean with its dreadful rush every particle of soot and 
ashes, covering the floors below with their forced-out 
mass, and filling the house with smoke. It had torn 
up the kitchen hearth, hurling the bricks across the 
room, splintered the floor, and plunged into the cellar 
beneath; finding a point and passage for its leap, 
doubtless, in the position of an old, heavy iron bar, 
which had stood leaning against the wall below since 
they could hardly remember when, and was now half 
buried, obliquely, in the earth, some yards away. 

Upstairs, in the long garret room, a rent in the roof 
and a split rafter, close beside the chimney, showed 
where the other portion of the fluid had come in. Just 
behind Lodemy’s bed-head it was ; and following some 
great nail, or clamp, or bolt, a third current had torn 
through, caught the metal rods around the high old- 
fashioned frame, on which its draperies had sometime 
run, fused them in its fiery grasp, and flung them in 
molten drops all down upon blankets, coverlet, and 
carpet, burning holes, in every one of which a perfect 


DOWN THE PINE LANE. 


391 


shot was buried. This was the smell of woolen that 
had assailed us. The high, gilt, ornamented mirror- 
frame was blackened, and beside it was torn plaster, 
and outside a clapboard burst forward near a tin 
leader, that ran down the corner to the ground. This, 
split, and detached from its fastenings, told the rest. 

Within the garret was a most strange confusion. 
As if the fearful spirit had found itself penned in, and 
had dashed itself hither and thither in mad, instanta- 
neous search and trial for an outlet ; seizing and fling- 
ing pell-mell one thing after another that failed it, 
in its grasp after that which should suffice to lead it 
through. 

An old, disabled clock was disemboweled of its ma- 
chinery; its springs and wheels twisted, melted, and 
scattered; its pendulum found sticking by its slender 
point straight upright in the floor. A bundle of light 
stair-rods was dispersed and driven in every direction ; 
no two lay together; some had gone through the win- 
dows, out of doors. 

Quite across the building from its point of entrance, 
the mass of the fluid had forced its way through beams 
and boarding, and found conduct by a new leaden pipe 
down into the water-butt by the kitchen door. Little 
streams seemed to have wandered and escaped here and 
there. 

The wires over the girls’ “stoop,” on which the 
greenery grew, were destroyed. The poles and vines 
were prostrate; scorched. The lightning had come 
even there, and broken down their dream. 

Frasie cried when she saw it. It was the worst of 
all. “They should never she said. “They 

could never tell what was left.” 

Other mischief might be traced and mended. But 
how could they mend their old, long fantasy, that had 
grown so dear and beautiful with years ? 


392 


HITHERTO. 


Miss Frasie trembled and cried more and more. 
She was delicate, poor old lady, and sensitive, as im- 
aginative persons always are; and the shock to her 
nerves had been very serious. Remember gave her 
aromatic hartshorn, and told her to behave ; whereupon 
she stopped crying, and began to giggle childishly. 
This was worse. 

“There! do exactly as you ’re a mind to,” said Re- 
member, “and have it out; then you’ll feel better. 
Only if you cari^t stop, keep taking the hartshorn.” 

“Now, see here,” said Richard, coming in where 
we were gathered round her. “You ’ve just all got to 
come over to the farm and stay to-night, and as much 
longer as you will. You can’t get tea nor breakfast 
here, even saying you were fit to, as you ain’t. That 
kitchen chimney has got to be looked to before you 
build a fire in it. Can you keep comfortable while I 
ride home, and bring back Jabez and a wagon? ” 

Only Richard would have thought of that; that 
neither Hope nor I ought to have the care of driving; 
that we must be taken care of to-night in all things. 
I think he had found, too, that our horse, standing fas- 
tened in the barn through all the tempest, had had 
nerves as well as we, and was hardly in fit condition 
for a nervous woman’s hands. 

So he left us, to bring back Putterkoo and Jabez. 
After he had gone, we stayed still in the room where 
we were, — the little oblong back room opening on 
the “stoop.” I think they all had the same feeling 
that I had ; of something weird and ghostly that had 
been through the house; that somehow seemed like an 
uncanny presence still. 

It grew dusk; the sun was down. There were tall 
old lilac-bushes close to the windows of this room, 
reaching away up to the very eaves. The shadows 
gathered quickly; we sat closer together. 


DOWN THE PINE LANE. 


• 393 


“Had n’t we better be getting our things on? ” sug- 
gested Remember. “Men-folks don’t like to wait.” 

How did she know about men-folks ? Just as we 
know about flavors that we never tasted, yet can say, 
“This, or that, is like them.” 

But to think of Remember Polisher asking anybody, 
“Had n’t we better ? ” Or even thinking of a thing 
that perhaps had better be done, without springing 
right up to do it! Yet ’Member sat on, and nobody 
answered. Nobody thought we had better, until 
Richard should come again. 

I saw it twice before I said anything. At first I 
supposed my eyes were strained with all the glare and 
fright, and that I saw it as a sort of spectrum. But 
it came a third time, and at the same moment Lodemy 
and I spoke out, involuntarily, “ What was that ? ” 

It was only a pale blue tremble in the air; like the 
shimmering of heat, but with this color added. It 
quivered for an instant and melted out. It was like a 
breath; it might be dying breath. 

“Why? Do you hear anything? Are they com- 
ing ? ” asked Miss Frasie, in her weak, thin, anxious 
voice. 

“I guess not,” said Hope. “Perhaps something 
went by over on the road.” 

She shook her head, behind Miss Frasie, as she 
spoke. I knew by her look that she had seen what we 
did. But Miss Frasie must not be startled any more. 

It happened again and again, however, while we 
waited. I breathed shorter and shorter, longing for 
Richard to come. Something rushed through my brain 
with an undefined, ignorant suggestion, — one word, 
— that I had picked up some time. I could not tell 
where or how. 

^'‘After-clap.” 

Was there such a thing? Might there be some 


394 


HITHERTO. 


force, slumbering, unappeased, unequalized still, around 
us, — under our feet ? Might there he, after long in- 
terval, some sudden outbreak, some final, harmonizing 
discharge through this haunted air, these dislocated 
affinities ? 

I should have doubted to this day, perhaps, if we 
really did see it, only that after Richard came, and 
began to help make fast the house for leaving, Hope 
and he and I were all together by a doorway, when it 
came again. Faint, flickering, just visible, like a lick- 
ing flame, it ran down along the door-frame, fading as 
it went. 

“ Did you see ? ” 

We both turned to Richard, asking him. 

“Yes. It ’s strange. But then it ’s all strange. 
It ’s coming round right, I suppose. Whatever it is, 
it ’s working off. There ’s always a way for every- 
thing, and it is n’t our lookout, you see. Now wrap 
up; and let ’s be off.” 

He hurried us away. He would not let us stop to 
watch, or think, or talk. 

Martha had a wonderful tea for us that night ; and 
it was wonderful to sit down to it and eat and drink, 
as if we had not seen into the depths, and felt the 
awful touch of the powers of the air, and been almost 
out of the body and face to face with God. 

Yet we were left to live here on this earth, and not 
a hair of our heads had been breathed upon, and quiet 
days were to be again for us, — great sunrises and glo- 
rious sunsets, with no terror in their flames ; and bread 
was to be sweet and needful, and fruits juicy, and 
common living among friends pleasant, as it had been, 
in old, small, simple ways. 

To see Martha bring the little old, black teapot in, 
to fill up the tall china one, made me feel braver again, 
I knew not how. It was the reassurance that there 


DOWN THE PINE LANE. 


395 


could still be little black teapots, and things like them, 
and the use of them, in the world. The same world 
where there were lightning-drawing rocks, and tem- 
pests, and great clouds coming down, and fire rushing 
from the heavens forked with destruction. 

Teas and breakfasts and dinners and peaceful nights 
of sleep, and household work, and farming in the fields, 
always, everywhere ; storms here and there only, and 
once in a while. 

I was quite happy again by bedtime. Very happy 
when Richard stopped me at the stair-foot, behind the 
others, though he had said good-night before. 

“I could not helj) — that — Anstiss; when I first 
came, you know. It was just as if I had found you 
on the other side of the grave. I don’t count it as 
any difference — yet — unless ” — 

“It is yet, — it is unless! ” I answered him low, 
hurriedly, impetuously. “Richard, there will never 
be anybody like you ! ” 

I thought only of his strong, beautiful, sure love. 
I must have it about me in my life. I could not turn 
and go away from it again. Had not God sent it? 
Put it before me, once, twice, always ? Had He given 
me anything else ? Did this mean nothing of his will ? 

“Anstiss! Come back a minute, Anstiss! ” 

I turned to go back with him. 

“No! No! ” he said then in his strange, generous 
way. “It shall all be till morning. Good-night — 
Nansie ! ” 

He did not kiss me, though we were left all alone. 
He did not even take me in his arms again. He would 
not claim me. He would not take advantage of the 
over-excitement and impulse of the night. 

Would any other than Richard Hathaway ever have 
done so? 

Might I not love this man? 


396 


HITHERTO. 


It was a strange night to me. Twice in my life I 
have passed other such nights when a great peace has 
come after a deep agony of experience. 

I do not know which were the greater rests, — the 
sleepings or the wakings. They alternated all night 
long. 

The hush and the sweetness after the storm; the 
tame little night-winds breathing in at the windows; 
the gleam of the far-up stars. The wideness of the 
safety and the mere point of havoc and harm. The 
being hack again from glimpse and possibility and ter- 
rible nearness of doom. I rested in these with untold, 
unsated content. I rested in the human love beside 
me; ready to he close beside me through all. God 
forgive me if this were all selfishness. I thought it 
was thankfulness and peace. 

In the morning Miss Remember was herself again. 
She must go hack to the Ledges. 

“All creation will be there, you see, as soon as it 
gets round. And it ’s pretty well round by this time. 
It T1 be wuss ’n lightning if I ain’t there. Submit, 
you and I ’ll go along. The girls can stay if they 
like; if they think they can get over it better here 
than there. But I ’m for marching right up to a thing 
when it ’s got to be met and seen to.” 

So Submit and Remember went along. 

Hope sat with Lodemy and Frasie after the early 
morning work was done, out by the open hall door 
where the air came by keen and bright from the 
northwest hills, “swept crystal clear,” and the little 
slant of sunshine at their feet beneath the trees was 
pleasant. 

Hope took up the task of soothing poor Miss Frasie. 
It was needful ; for there was real danger in the shat- 
tering of her nerves and spirits. 

The real and the ideal which she had lived in so 


DOWN THE PINE LANE. 397 

curiously together seemed jumbled in her mind into 
one loss and confusion and pain. 

“I ’d got it all kind of regular and nice, you know; 
I knew just where everything was. Now I don’t 
know whether there ’s anything. Or ever was. Do 
you think it was a judgment^ Hope? Was it graven 
images ? ” 

“Don’t you see, dear Miss Frasie, that the very 
things the storm could not touch were the things you 
loved so? It was only the signs of them that could 
he torn down. Your little vines and strings and wires 
were only little marks put in to keep the place and 
make it seem more real ; but they were the least real 
things. Why, if it had all been built in timber, that 
wouldn’t have been the real part. It isn’t the real 
part of any houses. Lightning can’t strike the inside. 
The signs of us ourselves aren’t the real part of us 
even. Why, it all goes together and there is just one 
comfort in it. ‘For we know, if the earthly house of 
this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a house not 
made with hands, eternal in the heavens.’ I never 
saw that before ! It has just come ! 

“Why, I don’t much believe it would be wicked,” 
Hope went on, “to take those other words for such a 
meaning, partly : ‘ Lay up for yourselves treasures in 
heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and 
where thieves cannot break through nor steal. ’ I 
think God gave it to you, dear Miss Frasie, within; 
what He did not see good to give you without ; I think 
it is the beginning of what is laid up for you from the 
foundation ; just as we give little children a taste, you 
know, and put the rest away. It isn’t struck nor 
burned; it ’s there! ” 

Nobody but Hope could have comforted her so. I 
think Hope saved her “faculties,” which Miss Remem- 
ber was afraid would go. 


398 


HITHERTO. 


Richard came to me very directly and simply, and 
asked me if I would walk down the Pine Lane with 
him. 

The Pine Lane — really a glorious avenue — ran 
down behind the orchard, skirting the Great Mowing, 
and ended in deep woods. It had begun with a cart- 
path, I suppose, up which they brought in their logs cut 
in the “Back Lot.” Generations ago, the pine-trees 
had been left standing — some even planted in — on 
each side, as the fields were cleared; and now, down 
to the piece of old forest whence they still cut all their 
wintef supplies, it was one broad, shaded pathway, 
deeply carpeted with soft brown needles. 

It was like the aisle of a cathedral. I walked 
down by Richard’s side, as I might have walked down 
a church to an altar. I knew we should come back 
from that walk no more two, but one. 

We came out of the deep, sweet- smelling shade upon 
a knoll that lay against the woods. Light broke in 
here. It was like an open chancel, — a great shrine, 
— with the Presence shining from above, as it came 
down between the cherubim. 

The forest around us gathered gradually. Its bor- 
der was of light growth; birches and alders edged it 
like a fringe. We looked into quiet nooks, and down 
the openings of little footpaths across which squirrels 
ran, and within which were nests of many little birds. 

We sat there all alone with God and his beauty. 

“It is a good place to come to after yesterday,” 
said Richard. 

I felt its calmness and sweetness good, as he knew 
they would be for me. Richard was a providence for 
me always. 

We rested there silently; till our whole souls and 
bodies were full in every thought and sense of the rich 
and beautiful peace. 


DOWN THE PINE LANE. 


399 

“This is your lane, Anstiss,” said Richard by and 
by. “We ’ve never been here naany times together; 
and yet you ’ve been with me always.” 

After that there was a silence between us for a 
while. 

“Every bit of the farm is yours in that way,” he 
began again. “You can’t help it, whether you take 
it or not.” 

“Please don’t talk about taking^ Richard. It is 
all taking with me. All giving with you.” 

“Will you take me, Anstiss? ” 

Even then he asked me to give him nothing; only 
that he might be allowed to give. 

It must have been meant to be. 

I turned round and put my two hands in his. Then 
I dropped my face upon them, and cried. 

Richard drew me up, and took me into his arms. 

“I will make you as happy as the day is long,” he 
said slowly, and sweetly, and solemnly. 

He did not tell me, like other men, that I had 
made him happy. He gave himself, utterly, like God. 

How mean I feel myself, remembering and writing 
this! 

It is not good to receive all. God himself knows 
that, requiring us to give back, even to Him. 

But I was very restfully, thankfully happy. 

I could do no otherwise. This love was put for 
me, and I could no longer do without it. God knew. 
I know this day that He did know. 

The morning grew sweeter and sweeter, in the 
sunniness after the rain. We stayed there a long 
time. 

Then we came up, through the pines, into the world 
again. 

We had to go home before dinner, Hope and I. 
Aunt Ildy would think it strange if we did not, al- 


400 


HITHERTO. 


though a message had been sent to her last night, and 
she knew that we were safe, and where. 

Richard drove us in. Jabez was to come into the 
town, and bring him back. 

Martha stared at Richard ^s goings on and goings 
off to-day. 

“He hasn’t laid a finger to the farm,” she said. 
“The men are just chalking out for therselves, as 
they please. ’T ain’t his way. The thunder ’s 
turned everything, I think, besides the milk.” 


CHAPTER XXVII. 

ANSTISS HATHAWAY. 

I WENT straight up to Aunt Hdy. She was in her 
room, darning some cap-laces. 

I forgot, for the moment, all about the lightning. 
That was the event before the last. It was to-day’s 
news, not yesterday’s, that I had upon heart and lip. 

^‘Aunt Hdy,” I said, ‘‘Richard and I have made 
up our minds.” 

Dead silence. 

What turn could any displeasure have taken, to 
equal that ? 

She did not even lift her eyes. I saw a certain 
start of astonishment, however, under the skin, as it 
were; and then the determination that set the lips 
and kept the eyelids down. Something was not right 
about it; but what could I do next? I stood and 
waited. 

I could not tell her over again. I could not en- 
large, or tell more. Neither could I go away without 
answer or notice. I wondered how long it would 
last, and whether she could bear it out longer than I 
could. I think I stood still there, before her, for 
about three minutes. It seemed five times as long. 

“Well?” she said, at length, lifting her eyes se- 
verely, as if simply wondering what I waited for. 

“You heard what I said. Aunt? ” 

She waited again. 

“About Richard and me? We have decided it.” 

“Umph! Very well. Then I suppose it is de- 
cided.” 


I 


402 


HITHERTO. 


Her eyes went down again. 

“Richard is downstairs, Aunt.” 

“He can’t want me. There seems to be no refer- 
ence to me in the case.” 

She looked, for outraged dignity, like nothing less 
than the United States government in a moment of 
defied authority or disregarded claim. 

“It used to be the fashion to consult fathers, or 
mothers, or somebody, before things were decided.” 

“Why, Auntie, of course he wants to see you. But 
I came to tell you first, myself.” 

Receiving no answer, and utterly at a loss as to 
whether she would appear and welcome him or not, I 
had to go away downstairs again to Richard. 

He was in the little sitting-room, that was closed, 
green and cool, against the August heat. Hope had 
gone to Lucretia in the kitchen, and presently I heard 
her pass upstairs, to Aunt Ildy. Then there were 
questions, and answers, and talk, fast enough. Hope 
was recounting, I knew, our experience at the Ledges. 

I sat down by Richard, on the haircloth sofa in the 
corner. I was more sure than ever that he was my 
refuge and rest. What should I have done if it had 
been any other than Richard? He knew Aunt Ildy’s 
ways. 

“You must manage it with Aunt Ildy,” I said to 
him. “I ’ve been unlucky, and begun at the wrong 
end with her.” 

I laughed as I said it; and then I cried a little. 
I could not help it; it seemed hard to me, in this 
gi’eat moment of my life, to miss — to want — I knew 
not what. I know now. It was mother-love. That 
which I had missed all my life ; missed it so long, 
that half the time I knew not now what it was I did 
miss. I looked for bread, and I had got a stone. 

Yet Aunt Ildy — I would not forget it — could be. 


ANSTISS HATHAWAY. 


403 


had iTeen, very kind. There was love in her heart, 
deep down ; sister-love, aunt-love, — her variety of it, 
— I suppose, too. There are all sorts and ways of 
aunt-love ; of mother-love there is hut one. 

Perhaps Hope did it; perhaps Aunt Ildy meant it 
all the while; but she came down after a time, and 
spoke to Richard very civilly. As soon as I could, I 
got away, and carried my bonnet upstairs. 

When I came back, she was doing everything proper 
and handsome. A tray, with plates and cake and 
wine, as suitable observance, stood waiting on the 
table; upon my return, at a look from Aunt Ildy, 
Hope handed it round. She came first to me; I 
broke a corner off a rich slice of the sacred compound, 
and took in my fingers one of the little low, round, 
old-fashioned glasses, with a feeling of guilt at being 
of so much importance. But I was happy; I knew 
that Richard must have made all right. 

Aunt Ildy had been, for a moment, like one of our 
modern street-cars, slipped off her track; she had been 
hoisted on again, and could proceed comfortably now 
upon the propriety- grade. 

After the little state luncheon, Richard stayed on, 
till it was time for dinner, which he ate with us, with- 
out more ado. 

Uncle Royle came in, with some speciality in his 
manner ; he had on a fresh, white-frilled shirt ; Aunt 
Ildy had had him upstairs. She, too, had put on 
rather a festival cap. 

Uncle Royle shook hands, with a particular kindness 
and dignity, with Richard. It was the right hand of 
family fellowship ; now it was all over for the present ; 
we could take things naturally. 

I was glad to talk about the storm, and the Polisher 
girls. I wondered what people did who were engaged, 
who had nothing happen to them, at the time, but the 


404 


HITHERTO. 


engagement. I thought an earthquake must be a 
gentle relief. 

After all, it was a white, pleasant day in my life. 
I did not like being made much of at the moment; 
because I was so ill-used to it, and have always felt it 
such a misdemeanor; hut I was glad to remember it 
at night, and I was very grateful. 

I was terribly afraid, however, of all the trouble I 
should have to make for Aunt Ildy before she had done 
with me. I wished I were married, and it were all 
well over. 

Hope went, in a day or two, for a regular visit at 
the Polisher girlses. It was her own thought. They 
were old, and timid, she said, and were in such dread 
of more storms. They had so much to do, too; they 
ought not to be all by themselves, just for a while. 

Hope seemed very still, somehow, since these hap- 
penings. She was heart-glad — we knew that — that 
it was all right between us; it was easy to see Hope’s 
gladness, or her pain. She was glad, satisfied; hut 
somehow she slid away into a retired tranquillity of 
her own. She was busy and cheerful, always doing, 
but softly, as if she were almost afraid of waking 
something. Only that her manner was so sweet, and 
her whole self so remindful of nothing that was not 
pretty and poetical, she made me think, curiously, of 
a most homely thing, — of Aunt Ildy’s way when 
she was threatened with a spasm of hiccough. Right 
wherever she was, at the first symptom, she would lay 
hold of something, grip hard, will hard, and breathe 
calm and slow. If she could get over the first minute 
or two, all was well ; the paroxysm would never come ; 
hut if it once got the better of her, she had a suffering 
time. Hope seemed almost to keep her breath under, 
as if some soul-spasm, which she would not have, for 
the moment threatened her. Whether it were a fear 


ANSTISS HATHAWAY. 


405 


and nervousness excited in her, as in us, by the storm 
and its horrors, or a dread of dreading, that was upon 
her, and she thus put by, I do not know; she seemed 
to put by something; and, whatever it was, I think it 
never held her. She rose more thoroughly and clear 
from the influence of that time than I have ever done. 

She helped the Polisher girls through with all their 
labors of renovation ; she realized many little idealities 
of home-adornment for them; she put a new, fresh 
face on much that replaced what else might have been 
unpleasant in its reminder and association; she left 
them cheerful, and she came home blithe. 

I was to be married in October; there was nothing 
to wait for. Nothing but my outfitting, which was 
all to be done. 

Hope and I sat day after day by the windows in 
Aunt Ildy’s room, with the big band-basket full of 
prepared work between us, and stitched away busily. 

All the makings of the household were set on foot 
and mostly accomplished in Aunt Ildy’s room; every- 
thing was cut out on her large bed. She herself, when 
she was not cutting out, sat in her rocking-chair by 
the chimney; in the summer-time she put her spools 
and scissors on the little ledge under the mantel; in 
the winter she ranged them on the broad corners of 
the Franklin stove. 

I remembered the days of Margaret Edgell and her 
bridehood. I thought of the things I meant then to 
have if ever I were a bride; of my determination to 
be married in church and wear a veil. 

It was curious how much I gave up as unimportant, 
or as not worth insisting on, now that the time had 
come. One after another, by Aunt Ildy’s decisions, 
or my own silence concerning them, they were dropped 
out of the catalogue of conditions and furnishings ; till 
the poetry of my bridal surroundings was very nearly 


406 


HITHEBTO. 


all shorn away, and only a very substantial and prosaic 
provision remained. 

Plenty of good towels and tablecloths, sheets and 
pillow-cases, for I must not go empty-handed of these 
to the farm, though Richard was a householder al- 
ready. Two good, useful, dark silks, and two meri- 
nos, were my winter dresses ; a double set of all un- 
der-garments, with extra frillings and edgings; two 
calicoes, for morning wear; a broch^ shawl for the 
autumn, and a purple thibet cloth pelisse, bound with 
silk, for the winter; after I had got all these, I was 
ashamed to ask for white silk and tulle for wedding 
array. I was ashamed to seem to take to myself any 
central importance; to intimate that my being mar- 
ried could be the beautiful and absorbing thing that 
it was for other people ; a thing to look at and to talk 
about. I never breathed a word about the veil. I 
made up my mind to be married with flowers in my 
hair. 

Aunt Ildy bought me a fawn-colored silk, very pale 
and delicate, and broad thread-lace for bosom and 
sleeves; these she said would always be useful; the 
silk would turn, and then color. I was so over- 
whelmed by her thought for me, and her real liberal- 
ity, that I uttered no word of preference for maiden 
white. 

Yet it was all just as it had been years ago ; the 
window was high ; there was a wall in the way ; things 
were to be acquiesced in, and made to do. 

I let my fancies drop ; I accepted the prose yet once 
more. Behind and beyond were the fact of Richard’s 
love, and the poetry of the new life that was to be for 
me. 

The Grandon Copes came home late in September. 
The house at South Side was full ; Laura and Kitty 
were both to be married in the spring. 


ANSTISS HATHAWAY. 407 

Augusta came directly to see me on her return; she 
was very well satisfied with my marriage. 

“Mr. Hathaway is such a strong, genuine man,” 
she said. “He is sure to go steadily on in the world. 
Grandon has the highest opinion of him, and of his 
influence in the neighborhood. You ’ll have such a 
nice home, too, Nannie; just what you like best about 
you. And it will be so nice to come there in the sum- 
mer-times and take little teas with you. I am glad 
your wedding is to be at once; later I couldn’t have 
been with you; and by January we shall be in Wash- 
ington. ” 

And then she gave me her wedding gift, — a deli- 
cate, superb, thread-lace scarf. 

“It can be a veil, you know, if you will do me the 
pleasure of wearing it so, and afterward a scarf, or 
anything, in fact. Thread-lace is always ‘handy to 
have in the house, ’ as my dressmaker said to me once, 
when I could n’t quite so well afford it, and she had 
made me get a yard too much at eight dollars the 
yard.” 

She approved of my wedding dress. “It was sun- 
shiny,” she said. “Just the same pale sort of sun- 
shine that I had in my hair.” 

It would be lovely now, indeed, with her exquisite, 
magnificent addition. It was Augusta’s wonderful 
tact once more. She had either divined from her 
knowledge of Aunt Hdy, or found out from Hope, that 
my wedding dress was to be handsome and sensible 
only; she threw the bridal grace over it, transforming 
it into summer sunshine and fleecy cloud. Without 
interference, either ; it was a gift for afterward ; Aunt 
Hdy saw especially the judiciousness of that ; only she 
should feel it a compliment if I changed my mind 
about a veil, and wore it at my wedding. 

She came down on the bright October morning. 


408 


HITHERTO. 


early, to lay its frosted mist over my hair, and fasten 
it with flowers: tube-roses and jessamine, and cool, 
glossy, deep-green leaves, with sprays of delicate vines 
falling and wandering away, among its transparent 
folds. 

It was strange how it should always fall to her to 
give my life whatever touch of outer grace it got; she 
came in like a fairy godmother, laying gifts and spells 
upon me. 

She put my very choice and fate in her own new 
lights, by her ways of setting forth. She could al- 
ways put things in such light and aspect as she would. 

She made my home and future complementary to 
her own; the farm over against South Side. She 
rounded the picture, showed it in related parts, cover- 
ing it with beauty and pleasantness. 

She could have me now, again, more than ever. 
Marriage would bring me into her sympathies. Mar- 
riage settled everything ; after that, people could 
understand and go on. 

I was married in the forenoon, in the stiff front par- 
lor that was hardly ever used, with its three windows 
looking on the street. But Hope and Mrs. Grandon 
Cope had made it beautiful with flowers, and had per- 
suaded Aunt Ildy to put up fresh, simple white muslin 
curtains; and they had looped back these with leaves 
and vines, and set the blinds aslant, by some ingen- 
ious device, so that the autumn sunshine just crept in 
across a pleasant shade. 

I did not hear a word the minister said. I won- 
dered, as he ended, if I could be truly married, the 
solemn sentences had gone over me so. I almost 
wanted to cry out that I had not heard, — I had not 
thought; to bid him say them over again. 

But they said I was married. Richard was by my 
side; the strong clasp of his hand when he had made 


ANSTISS HATHAWAY. 


409 

the promise was warm about mine still ; they came up 
and kissed me, and congratulated, and called me Mrs. 
Hathaway. 

Then I had to cut the cake, and to have the first 
piece; and whether I ate it, or what became of it, or 
what it was like, I do not know. 

There was more talk, more calling me by that new, 
strange name, a moving and changing of groups, a 
pleasantness and laughing, good-bys that seemed to 
come close upon the greetings, a thinning of the room, 
a driving off of some carriages; and then Richard 
asked me if I were ready to go home. 

There had only been cake and wine and fruit at the 
wedding ; Richard had insisted upon the dinner being 
at the farm. Aunt Ildy and Uncle Royle and Hope 
were to accompany me to my new home, and see me 
installed there, and then drive home quietly in the 
twilight. 

So Richard put me, in my sunshiny silk and my 
white gloves, with the soft, light lace upon my hair, 
into the carriage, — the state carriage of New Oxford, 
which bore brides to their homes, and mourners to the 
graves, — and we went out, in the bright October 
noon, over the same pleasant country road we had 
traversed hundreds of times before, yet every step of 
which was new to-day. For it was the beginning of 
our life-path together. 

I was a bride ; the bridal veil was over my head ; it 
was my husband by my side. The little children had 
stood at the top of the lane to see us pass. 

Was this the long romance that Margaret Edgell’s 
bridal day had seemed? After all, it was more like 
something in the way; it was strange, and short; an 
interruption half comprehended, a ceremony half en- 
tered into, between the dear, old, life-grown, confiding 
love and need, and the coming new and nearer life, — 


410 


HITHERTO. 


the life that was to prove our souls ; that was to be all 
there was for our two human hearts between this day 
and the grave. 

Home had not yet begun. It was high festival, 
sitting there at the head of Richard’s table, in my 
wedding dress, while Martha waited. 

She had put her pride into the wedding dinner, the 
good Martha; if I had been some strange, splendid 
lady, come from a far place, she could not have given 
me more careful honor. The honor that lay upon me 
was the being Richard’s wife. Any woman whom he 
had brought there would have been the same ; and I, 
whom she had seen all my life, was new and strange 
to her this day ; to be treated with a strangerly defer- 
ence. I was Mrs. Hathaway. 

I think, at the same time, that it was not I whom 
she had always wanted in that name and place. Yet 
Richard had wanted me, and I had come. That was 
enough. 

We walked up the Long Orchard after dinner. It 
was beautiful, in the shade of the broad arcades, with 
the fruit-ripeness among the branches and at our feet. 
It was beautiful away off over the hills, where the 
rest lay. The hidden brook sang in the autumn 
stillness. 

We sat on a rustic bench that Richard had put there 
lately. Aunt Ildy^made me take up my dress care- 
fully. I felt queerly, as if I were out visiting in 
some strange way with her; to go back again with her 
when the day was over ; above all, that I was respon- 
sible to her if any harm befell my unwontedly rich 
attire. She was really quite splendid in her black 
silk and her old English thread laces. 

I cannot remember what we talked about. It was 
a strange, dreamy, unreal day. 

After they had gone, — while they were going. 


AN STISS HATHAWAY. 411 

and Richard helping them off, — I slipped away to 
Martha. 

“Where are my trunks? Come help me, quick! ” 

And running upstairs with her, I unlocked, not the 
large, new one, which held Mrs. Hathaway’s things, 
— the unworn wardrobe, — but a little one, in which 
were gowns of Anstiss Dolbeare’s. 

I chose a plain delaine ; and I pulled out of a box 
some soft, deep-blue ribbons. I ran away with these 
to the little room that had been mine in my stays at 
the farm, shut myself in, took off my dress and veil, 
remembering, even then, with the fear of Aunt Ildy 
before my accustomed eyes, to shake out the silken 
breadths carefully across the bed, and to fold the 
costly lace beside it; and then, in a minute, I was 
Anstiss Dolbeare again, in my quiet brown, tying blue 
ribbons in my hair and at my throat. 

Of course Richard was looking for me. I listened 
at the door, and heard his step in the hall. I waited 
till he turned, and then ran lightly and swiftly, came 
up behind him, and laid my hand in his as he stood in 
the doorway. 

“ My little Nansie ! ” 

How tenderly he took me ! How glad, how grate- 
fully, he looked at me! 

“ My little wife, — in her brown dress ! ” 

“I wanted to get home., Richard. I have a good 
mind to go and make short-cake for tea.” 


CHAPTER XXVIII. 

UP THE RIVER. 

“We are going our bridal trip to-day, Nansie, ” 
Richard said to me, standing with me on the broad 
doorstone, in the October morning sunshine. 

It was the morning after our marriage. 

Red Hill was scarlet, and brown, and golden, and 
evergreen, before us. The elms were dropping amber 
in the door-yard. In the sunshine and the air to- 
gether were rich, sweet smells of autumn. It would 
be a day of life and glory, with a warm, delicious 
heart of noon. 

“I am going to take you where you have never 
been.” 

He could take me nowhere in the world, that day, 
where I had ever been before. It was all new. 
“The evening and the morning were the first day.” 

He and Martha managed it. I knew nothing of 
what went into the covered basket, or of who carried 
it away, or whither. Richard’s hands and arms were 
free for me when we set off together, walking up 
through the corner of the Long Orchard, and so out 
into the Pine Lane. 

All down the avenue it was green and still as ever. 
Summer was shut in here, saying her last, sweet 
prayers, while autumn blazed triumphant on the hills. 

We came out on the knoll. Down in the little ever- 
green coverts burned fires of beauty. Vines trailed in 
crimson light. Common little shrubs stood up, roy- 
ally, turned into pyramids and globes of gold. Un- 
derneath were white and purple stars, shining every- 


UP THE RIVER. 


413 


where. The beds of wild aster were filled with bloom. 
The barberries were hung with coral. The bitter- 
sweet had burst all its tawny husks, and showed its 
bright vermilion beads. 

The year had on its diadem for this our bridal time, 
and all up and down its robe were jewels. The breath 
of a perfected blessing was abroad. 

Richard did not say this, or any poetry, to me, as 
we sat there. He was a silent man. He was only 
very loving and very happy ; and he had taken me out 
into this perfect day, to keep it where it was the 
brightest. The fine instinct and the joy were in him ; 
at that moment I could do without the words. 

We walked on, down one of the little mysterious 
paths that branched into the woods. It wound, and 
wound, by moss and stone, and stump, and springing 
water. It was carpeted with pine needles sometimes, 
and sometimes with the fallen splendors of the maple, 
and was sometimes green on either hand with the late- 
growing ferns. It came out at last beside the river. 
We were two miles, and more, from home; yet all 
this lovely woodland, down to the river brink, was 
part of Hathaway Farm. It had been larger yet ; the 
largest farm in all that county ; but much of John’s 
part had been sold. For the rest, and for his sister’s, 
Richard was still paying a rent ; but he had bought in 
many of Mrs. Kingsdon’s acres, and he hoped to own 
the whole, in years to come, and keep it in the name. 

I did not see what he had brought me for, till we 
had come close down. Down to where a low river- wall 
was built against the bank, and long willow branches 
bent over and dipped into a sheltered cove. 

A little boat — dark green, with stripe of white, 
her oars dark-bladed, then freshly white up to the row- 
locks, then dark again for handling — lay moored 
against the rocks. 


414 


HITHERTO. 


“That is your wedding present, Nansie.” 

There had been an old, leaky boat upon the river, 
in which the hoys and men went fishing, or up after 
lilies ; hut for years past nothing fit for pleasure row- 
ing. It was a good way from home, and the Hatha- 
ways were busy people, who mostly took their plea- 
sures as they came, among their work ; like melon vines 
in corn-fields. 

“But now,” said Richard, “we’ll make holidays 
here.” 

He put me in at the stern, spreading my shawl for 
me. The covered basket was between the seats. 

How deep and dark the water was, under the banks ! 
How still and smooth it ran, even out in the middle 
current where the sun glanced down, and the oars 
tossed up sparkles ! 

We floated out, out of the very world, into a strange 
stillness, and up a wondrous opening avenue of glory. 
In all my life I had never been on the river in such a 
little boat before. 

That singularly dark water — the bed of the river 
here was a deep, dark mud — threw up marvelous 
reflections; and all the October splendor was heaped 
and showered upon its shores. 

Sumachs thrust their lances of flame out from under 
the brown alders ; woodbines flung their crimson dra- 
peries over the dark, heavy cedars; willows bent and 
dipped their yellow wreaths ; on the rocks were many 
shaded mosses, purple, and gray, and madder; coarse 
river-grasses kept their green, springing and swaying 
over in full curves from their dark hussocks; the mag- 
nificent beds of the pickerel-weed, with their great 
calla- shaped leaves, heaped themselves luxuriantly still. 

Down in the underworld of water all was clear and 
perfect as in the air. There were garlands, and stars, 
and globes, and arches ; grottoes and aisles ; roofs, 


UP THE RIVER. 


415 


pavements, and pillars, resplendent with living gems. 
Everything completed itself, and showed how only half 
was ever on the earth. The little islets were like 
green planets, perfect in beautiful space. Irregular, 
lichened rocks, duplicated, spread glorious wings, like 
shapes of life. Sometimes, when a wave was made 
in rowing, Richard would lift his oars and pause, to 
see it spread and break, shattering all this splendor 
into quivering, pulsing circles, that trembled up and 
up, shifting and undulating, melting and changing, 
magnifying and diminishing, like a world broken up 
in a kaleidoscope. 

What a wedding journey it was ! Away from 
everything, yet having everything, in a wondrous 
glory, to ourselves. 

Did Richard know it all ? All that he was bringing 
me to? 

All along the same, yet endlessly different. The 
same burning letters, in ever new words and lines. 
The same light above, the same depth below. 

Bend after bend ; vista after vista ; rounded curves, 
that seemed to make an end; then fresh outlet and 
onlet, deeper and deeper into the stillness and the 
beauty; a long poem, with ever-recurring refrain. 

“ God must mean it very much, ” I said, thinking it 
out aloud. 

“What?” asked Richard. 

“What He says in colors. He puts them every- 
where, and over and over.” 

Richard was silent then, as he always was when I 
grew mystical. It was a long, long time since I had 
been mystical with him before. Or even very often, 
with myself. Life had put its plain, hard, practical 
things upon me in these last past times. With the 
beginning of my new life sprang up again within me 
this interior impulse that could lie dormant long, and 


416 


HITHEBTO. 


still be vital. It was strange how color touched it, 



Richard was silent; not avertedly; he was simply 
not outwardly responsive. I was disappointed. I 
did so want him to read and interpret with me. 

I went on thinking, all alone. 

“It is in the heavens and the earth; and in the 
heaven beyond the earth. It is the wall of the New 
Jerusalem; the mystery that outlines and reveals the 
City, and that also, until we attain to it, holds us out. 
It dips down and touches all things with its light. 
But the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness 
comprehendeth it not.” 

My heart swelled with great longing and dim appre- 
hension; with a sense of holy things to he revealed 
and brought close; of the will to he done on earth as 
it is in heaven, and the glory made complete, as here 
the beauty in the water answered to the beauty above. 

God’s finger touched the world, writing his signs 
upon it. His finger also touched our lives, stirring 
their love into beauty. We must go reading and 
learning tlirough all the years. Must we not read 
together ? 

I laid my hand on Richard’s, as he rested on his 
oars. He took them in, drew me beside him, and put 
his arm about me. We floated idly, in the beautiful 
shade and stillness, dropping back a little in the river 
current. 

“We must be married in the spirit, Richard,” I 
whispered, resting in his strong, loving hold. 

“I am married to you, Anstiss, through and 
through; every thought and fibre of me.” 

I was happy; but there was something not quite 
satisfied. Would he not take me into the deep places 
of his life? Would he not care for the depths of 
mine? 


UP THE RIVER. 


417 


THE SILENT SIDE. 

Richard rowed up the still river, with the glory on 
either hand. Before him was the face of Anstiss; 
pure, peaceful, thoughtful. 

It was as if through his life flowed just such a river; 
hushed, shut in; away from the world. 

Secluded between deep banks; up above were the 
dust and hurry and toil of high roads and field-faring 
men; here it was holy holiday, always. But the river 
could not pour itself forth, running out into life on 
every hand ; it must hold its silent way, growing by 
that which should be continually poured in. 

Down, far down, shone the glory of the heaven and 
the beauty of the earth ; true in its true profound ; but 
none could enter under their arches, into the far-reach- 
ing aisles, or, putting forth a hand, grasp and bring 
back the golden branches. Thought and beauty were 
in him like this. A touch resolved them into shad- 
ows ; only fact stood fast, and might be measured and 
handled and talked about. 

The river of his heart was full of answering blessed- 
ness, this day; of rounded, perfect pictures, half a 
dream; which half he could hardly say. He felt its 
far-off springs away up in the mountain places of be- 
ing, where souls are solemnly alone; where the begin- 
nings of life are born, and continually renewed, beside 
the throne of God. 

He knew not why the river hushed him so ; where 
were the awe, and the tenderness, and the close, beau- 
tiful withdrawal, and the bosom-holding of great Love. 

He only knew that it had been so to him many times 
before, alone; that it was doubly, dearly so to-day, 
as he felt beforehand that it should be. 

“I saved it Up for her all this time. I was jealous 
of it for her. I should never have brought her here, 


418 


HITHERTO. 


unless — But it had to be some time, as it is to-day. 
I must have had her here. 

“‘In the midst there is a River; ’ there, where 
there is no more sea. 

“ ‘ In the midst there is a River. ’ ” 

It repeated itself over and over in his mind ; yet he 
thought not about his thinking. If it had come to his 
li2)s, it would have opened a joy of thought to Anstiss ; 
a joy that the thought had been with him. 

What did come to his lips was, — 

“I should not like to live where there was not a 
river near. I don’t believe I ever could.” 

“Have you been here much, Richard? ” 

“Yes; I know it all. It has been like the Pine 
Lane, Anstiss. It is one of your places.” 

She longed for the deep places of his life; to be 
taken into them with him. How could she not see 
that this was it, — her very longing? How could she 
not see what it stood for with him having her here be- 
side him ? How the untranslated signs were yet signs 
to his soul of what was in God’s Soul also as He made 
them? 

“See that red oak, Anstiss, in there among the 
hrown, high hack in the field. It was a good thing, 
its getting there, among the walnuts. Somehow, 
things do seem to get into the right places; it ’s won- 
derful how.” 

His eye ran from tint to tint ; one needed the other ; 
the carbuncle of the oak, and the walnut brown ; * the 
scarlet of the creepers and the deep, sombre shadow of 
the evergreens ; flame-color and tender yellow kissing 
each other in the maples; the bronze of the ash, and 
the mellow gleam of the chestnut; the soft blue of 
heaven interspacing and enfolding all. You leaned 
against the restful contrast; there was asking and 
answering; there were chords. 


UP THE RIVEB. . 


419 


“ It is like a tune in a church, ” he thought to him- 
self; hut he did not say so, because he could not have 
told why. “You get one part, and it makes you want 
another. You know what must come next, though you 
never heard it before.” 

“God must mean it very much,” Anstiss said then. 

It was not that the word repulsed him; hut that 
below words his thought moved unformed. It had 
touched him, — the tender scale in color, — striking 
harmonies to the spirit, like the harmonies in sound; 
prophesying and fulfilling. 

Anstiss reached for the meaning; the word that 
the color and the music brought. She questioned; 
analyzed. 

Richard hushed himself before these things, always ; 
he let his spirit be played upon, like ^olian harp- 
strings ; he knew not what it was that stirred. He 
let the glory touch him; as the rainbow comes down 
among the treetops in a field, and rests its pillars on 
the very grass. He was content that it should shine. 

It was a beautiful thing to this son of nature to be 
alive ; to move and breathe among these dear concord- 
ances ; he left them simply to the “ goodness and the 
grace ; ” they were, and he was glad. 

He would not have quoted the Scripture, nor un- 
derstood that in his heart were the words of the 
Christ ; yet, as Anstiss spoke, something warm within 
him, under his silence, recognized with a tender hum- 
bleness the continual gift. 

“For the Father loveth the Son, and giveth all 
things into his hands.” 

This was what God “meant, so much,” in his beau- 
tiful world. In his world where things got, wonder- 
fully, into their right places. Where Richard and 
Anstiss Hathaway were face to face, this day of utter 
peace. Where they were to be, side by side, always, 


420 


HITHERTO. 


while the world should be for them. It was just his 
good pleasure, giving his little ones the kingdom. 

“I am married to you, Anstiss, through and through. 
Every thought and fibre of me.” 

The whole man spoke ; out of a whole, loyal heart. 

Just as much a little while after, with not a word 
between, when he pushed the boat in under a sloping 
bank; where cedars and alders, elders and willows, 
barberries and blackberries, with grapevines and wood- 
bines flung among and over all, grew as they do grow 
beside New England streams; and far up into a quiet 
shade ran a little pathway. 

“Are you hungry, Nansie? It is time my little 
wife had her dinner.” 

It was so dear to him that henceforth he should 
feed and care for her, of right and always! 


CHAPTER XXIX. 

HOME. 

I LIKED SO much the little beginnings of my own 
housekeeping. 

Aunt Ildy brought over to me my mother’s silver, 
marked with her name. I never knew about it ; she 
had kept it for this time. 

There were pretty little, old-fashioned, small-bowled 
teaspoons, with scallop shells upon the handles. 
There was a quaint, low, long-lipped cream-boat with 
a high, slender loop for a handle, and there was a 
broad, shallow basin, in whose pure, gleaming round 
I delighted to turn and rinse the delicate little cups 
that had been Richard’s mother’s. I could not use 
it for a slop-basin. For this I kept a commoner one, 
behind the teapot, out of sight. 

I had them all upon the breakfast table the morn- 
ing after they came, with the bright, new crimson- 
checkered cloth also that was among my furnishings. 
The silver looked so pretty on it, and the glass vase 
filled with white double asters, and golden, bronze- 
streaked nasturtiums and green leaves, was so fresh 
and lovely in the middle. 

Richard liked my replacings. I put away nothing 
that he specially loved, but I made a new-married 
look about all with my bridal belongings. 

He had had the little breakfast-room — and other 
rooms — repainted before I came. The wainscots in 
this were now of a full, creamy buff, — my favorite 
color, I have liked the smell of fresh paint from that 


422 


HITHERTO. 


time until now. It seems as if all the world were 
new, and every morning were the first one. 

It was the holiday season of the year, upon the 
farms. The summer grains were gathered ; the winter 
grains* were sown; only the apples and the root crops 
were being got in, and the old cider-mill was grinding 
clear, bright juices that we drank and gave our friends 
new from the vats. It was our wedding wine. 

We carried some one day to Mrs. Cryke. The 
cider was the errand that he made, but Richard’s ob- 
ject was to take his wife. 

He made me wear my bonnet with the white rib- 
bons, and my mazarin blue merino dress. The winds 
were cold now. We were in November. 

For the cider we got beer, of course; and much 
welcome, and many thanks, and elbow-marks of ad- 
miration. Mrs. Cryke looked at us as the old and 
solitary do look at the young and newly married; as 
upon those entered into a beautiful mystery, new and 
separate for every pair. 

“ The best of the farm, ” she said, leaning forward 
toward Richard, and underscoring; “the best of the 
farm. You always bring me a taste of that. And 
now it ’s a sight of the little wife, — in the newness. 
The wife is the best of all, — to the husband, Mrs. 
Hathaway, ” — italicizing with her other elbow at me, 
— “ the best to you is him ! ” 

How the elbows marked the pronouns and the an- 
tithesis; how they put in the dash, pausing between 
their sweeps either way ; how the whole anatomy of 
the woman was alive with her earnestness, and her 
friendliness, and her gladness! It was good to have 
been married, even for a word like this. 

She bent aside to me presently, with an elbow held 
up behind my shoulder, as speaking with a particular 
privacy, — 


HOME. 


423 


“ Did you ever read ‘ Sir Charles Grandison ’ ? ” 

I had read it years before, sitting in dear Mrs. 
Hathaway’s room, where the seven leather- bound vol- 
umes lay in the little book- cupboard, except as I, in 
my visits, brought them out, and once, when she had 
lent them to me for a while. 

“Long ago, — yes,” I answered. 

“Better read it again, now. I’ve got it; he lent 
it to me. Now I ’ll give it back to you. Because, 
you see,” she added, bringing her other elbow up be- 
fore me in a still closer shelter, and leaning still more 
face to face with the parenthesis, — “jffe ’s — part 
— Grandison ! ” 

Nothing would do but she must bring them out; 
also some bottles of her beer to carry home ; and, mak- 
ing us promise to read the one and drink the other, 
faithfully, she let us go ; shouldering us out, by way of 
lingering, delighted demonstration; and stood there 
by her door, looking after us, with her arms high 
akimbo, as if it were a manner of benediction. 

These quiet, pleasant goings about — seeings and 
being seen — were our honeymoon. Two or three 
times Aunt Ildy and Hope came over and drank tea. 
Hope drew Aunt Ildy more and more into a genial 
living. For Hope herself life seemed just as full, as 
satisfying, as ever. She looked on, apparently, into 
no long, dull years, with Uncle Boyle and Miss Chism 
growing older and older, the latter, perhaps, crosser 
and crosser; as Lucretia said, “more kind o’ pudgicky, 
you know ; ” she dreaded no tiresome routine ; all was 
glad and fresh; every day began with a glory and 
ended with a peace. 

Hope had no wants ; the thought of a joy was joy ; 
you could “see nothing that wasn’t there, — some- 
how. ” 

She entered so into the joy of our marriage. “You 


HITHERTO. 


424 ‘ 

see it’s something you can’t keep me out of,” she 
said to me one day. “The goodness and the realness 
of anything like that go such a great way. Everybody 
gets some. No two people, nor no five, can keep the 
whole. Being married, and being horn, and being 
converted, and coming home from a great way off after 
a long time, — why, they spread ! The whole town is 
glad, and takes thought about it. Or else, why do 
they all turn round in church to look at folks that 
have had a happening ? And this is such a bright, 
beautiful thing! ” 

Hope took nothing just like other people. Not 
even pain, and fear. She went beyond, always. 

We were talking one day — it was linked so with 
this “happening” of ours — of the thunder. 

“I do not think you were half so frightened as the 
rest of us,” I told her. “And it didn’t seem to stay 
by you — the awfulness of it — as it did with me. 

It went quivering over me, — it does now, sometimes, 
— just as those blue lights quivered about the door- 
frames after the storm was past. And while it was 
happening — Oh, Hope! I wouldn’t live through 
that again, for any living afterward ! ” 

“Any living? Oh, Anstiss! You don’t know 
what it might be ! ” 

There was a sort of rapt intenseness in Hope’s face 
as she spoke. I remembered that a' gleam of it had 
been across her paleness even on that day. 

“You couldn’t have been afraid! ” I cried. “I 
wonder what you are made of! ” 

“Yes,” said Hope slowly and simply, as one re- ^ 
calling and examining a feeling past, “I was afraid. 
But I was something else, too. I think, ” she added, 
with a quiet kind of earnestness, “that I was inter- 
ested.” 

“ Interested ! Hope Devine, how do you mean ? ” 


HOME. 


425 


“I was interested,” she answered, with the same 
abstracted simplicity, “ to see what God would do with 
me next.” 

She was always so sure that God would do some- 
thing next. That her story — that no one’s story — 
was ever all told and done. 

We had Miss Bremer’s lovely first book to read, 
that early, frosty, fire-lighted time, — the “Neigh- 
bors.” How good it was forme! How it confirmed 
my certainties, — showing its kindred simple, pleasant, 
not too poetic or romantic, pastoral and domestic life ! 
Reading about Bear and Fanny, and the little sugar- 
cakes, and the cow Audumbla, and the teas on Svano, 

» — yes, even of 7/ia chere mhre and her sharpnesses, — 
I saw such an encouraging and indorsing reflection of 
my own surroundings, and my own cheer! I could 
live in this story, as we only can in such as touch and 
illustrate our own. My life was as much a story — an 
idyl — as this. That was what curiously ratified even 
my honeymoon content. 

And so the snows came down, and the bleakness; 
and Thanksgiving came and went, — our first Thanks- 
giving; and Christmas was near at hand; and the 
deep winter closed in around Broadfields and the 
farm. 


CHAPTER XXX. 

SATISFIED ? 

A DAY of pain. A day in the depths. Reaching 
hour by hour into darkness ; in a blind struggle ; long- 
ing for rest ; for the end ; any end. 

Then — again, the second time in my life — a 
night of infinite peace. The September moon glinting 
in at the blinds. Crickets singing in the sweet, dry, 
autumn stubble. 

My baby, — soft-breathing, — my real, little, living 
baby, by my side. 

Richard gone away, with a smile on his face, into 
the guest-chamber. 

Mrs. Cryke sitting by the low, small fire, settling 
little things about it that might be wanted. 

I wondered if she would tend the baby with her 
elbows. 

No. She only talked with her elbows. She did 
everything with the quickest, lightest, tenderest fin- 
gers. 

But what if she should suddenly need punctuation 
marks ; the baby in her arms ? I laughed out, gently, 
at the fancy. 

I think she was frightened. She came to me 
quickly, leaning over the bed. I could see the anxious 
questioning in her raised elbows then. 

“Nothing, — nothing,” I said. “I am only so 
happy.” And so I was. We laugh more out of our 
moods, than at the things, always. 

“Well there, don’t then, dear,” she said sooth- 
ingly. “Leave off being happy till morning.” 


SATISFIED f 


427 


But I kept waking up, for nothing else than to be 
happy, all night long. All night long the dear little 
breathing was at my side. 

“And God breathed into his nostrils the breath of 
life.” That kept coming to me. God had begun his 
creation all over again for me. 

“What will Bichard say in the morning? ” 

He had gone away so quietly ; only with that kiss 
and look of shining happiness upon his face. 

In the morning he came in, and looked at us, very 
much as if he were afraid of us both. 

“How is the little wife? And how is the little 
wife’s little man? ” 

That was all he dared to say, or could say, some- 
how. 

I was well enough. I would have liked to have had 
him say more. 

[Richard Hathaway had not shut his eyes to sleep 
the whole night long. All night, till the day began 
to come, he had lain in a deep reaction of joy, mutely 
thanking God. Listening for any sound from his 
wife’s hushed room. Holding back his gladness, lest 
he should be glad too soon, or too much. Afraid lest 
some terrible reversal might he even yet. 

Once he stole to the door, that was ajar, and looked 
in. They were all still, and asleep. Then, after the 
cocks began to crow, he slept also, for an hour. 

After he had kissed his wife and spoken to her those 
few words, he had gone away with tears in his eyes 
that no one saw. 

“I suppose,” Anstiss said slowly, to herself, “men 
take it for granted that their babies will be born. 
They are glad, but they have n’t been through the 
awfulness, the blackness; helping God find a life in 
the dark. Only He and women know.”] 


428 


HITHERTO. 


That passed by. 

My brain was overstrained, even with happiness; 
and when it rested, my soul rested, and I saw more 
rightly. I lay in the .peace of my guarded room, shut 
up to the luxury of thought, and blessed, continual, 
new possession. I rested in Richard’s tenderness, 
shown in every watchful care, shining down upon me 
and my baby in that deep, wistful look of his eyes, so 
gentle for a man, so brimming with what came to eyes 
only, or lay upon lips unbent, half moved with unde- 
livered words. 

Richard loved me with all that love. I knew it. 
Was I not content? Or why? 

If only loving me so, he could lay his strong hand 
on mine and lift me up! Lift me, always, up, and 
up, into the light ! 

If he did not stop right there, in just his happy 
tenderness, most like a woman’s, — almost like a 
child’s. If there were only a grand high wisdom with 
it, overshadowing me, reflecting to me God’s Face! 
If he could always go up into the mount for me, and 
bring me down the word, the answer ! 

Why did I demand all this? Why was only one 
side of me happy and full content? Why should I 
have more than other women ? 

I lay and let myself be blessed with that which 
came. I was blessed then. I would not let myself 
look at that shut-down longing. 

The September days were beautiful. The sounds 
that crept into my blinded room were sublimated 
sounds. The creak of the wagons, the voices of the 
farm-men as they came and went, the low, motherly 
cluck of hens, the flutter of pigeons coming down for 
crumbs to Martha’s door, — these were sounds of 
heaven, touching upon the calm wherein I lay, a wo- 
man who had brought a life from God into the world. 


SATISFIED f 429 

I had been close to heaven. Its airs came back with 
me. I heard as the angels hear. 

Shadows flickered in upon the white ceiling; shad- 
ows of glorified life; the noise, the dust, the ache and 
tire, discharged; only the beautiful spirit left, as it 
sifted through upon my rest. 

Mrs. Cryke was a minister of grace, wings and all ; 
for there were plumes upon her elbows to me, as she 
carried them. She held them over my boy while, he, 
lay upon her lap, fresh bathed and robed, shielded 
lightly with soft flannels. She hovered over him with 
caressing touches upon tiny lips and chin; her face 
beaming and bowing upon him, between outspread 
wings, like a cherub’s. 

Mrs. Cryke could do everything. Was that why 
the superfluous, anticipative energy flowed out so at 
those upper joints, before it came down to her hands ? 
Was there an instinct of fingers there? Or was it the 
beginning of wings ? 

She had come to me because the nurse I had en- 
gaged was taken ill, and I had needed her sooner than 
I thought. She stayed because we liked her so. Her 
cat, Solomon, kept house for her, hut I am pretty sure 
that Richard and Putterkoo got round there every day 
or two, not unaccompanied with what Solomon received 
as “the best of the farm.” 

There was in Mrs. Cryke her own individual streak 
of the abounding New England quaintness. She 
amused me hourly with her sayings, — the aptness and 
suggestiveness of them. 

The second day after my baby was horn, she went to 
a press not constantly used, in my room. I remem- 
bered that the morning of my illness it stood open, 
left so after some hurried bringing out of something 
that was wanted. I remembered lying and looking at 
the door ajar, in lulls of suffering, with a half-deliri- 


430 


HITHERTO. 


ous feeling that the agony was behind it and would 
come forth upon me again. 

It had been a warm noontide. The air was sum- 
mer-hot; but at night it changed, and since then, 
mountain winds had shaken their sparkles through all 
the atmosphere and made it keenly bright. 

“I declare to Moses! ” she exclaimed, in an under- 
tone, to herself. “If here isn’t day before yesterday 
shut up in this ’ere clusset! ” 

“Don’t, for the sake of all the children of Israel, 
let it out, then, Mrs. Cryke, ” I cried in answer, laugh- 
ing, from the bed. 

“Massytoous! diidi you hear? I Aave gone and 
stirred you up? ” And she elbowed toward me. “You 
ain’t to laugh before this time next week, — not a 
mite ! ” she said solemnly, enforcing the solemnity by 
a sweep that seemed to gather up the time she spoke 
of, and to thrust the days behind her. 

“Now, I ’ll do the talking, and the laughing, too, 
— all that ’s good for you, — if you ’ll hold still. I 
and the little king ! ” And she turned to hover over 
the cradle, where a small nestling and a little medita- 
tion of a cry began. 

“As for the yesterdays, young general, — the days 
when you was nH, — they ’ll never be again, you know ; 
and you ’ll never know how to believe they have been. 
This is the Year One for you! But they ’re put away, 
and more or less of ’em is shet up somewheres. They 
ain’t always pleasant to let out, that ’s a fact! But 
to-day is always big enough to freshen ’em.” 

Mrs. Cryke and Martha got on, also, in the loveli- 
est way, together. The elbows had always some new 
admiration marks for doings downstairs ; there was 
always some cheery story to tell of the pleasantness 
and comfort kept there. 

“She’s in the cider-suller, now,” was the bulletin 


SATISFIED f 


431 

one day. “Precisely in her aliment. A muck of dirt 
and cobwebs behind where the empty barrels stood.” 
The elbow went round behind her, here, and indicated 
the dark corner. “Martha says she hates dirt; but 
she don’t, unless it ’s with a kind of lovin^ hatred. 
She wouldn’t know what to do without it. She loves 
it as the Lord loves a sinful heart ; for the blessedness 
of making it clean again ! No sin, no salvation. ” 

She told me I had “just everything, and one to 
carry, to make me contented. “House, and farm, 
and husband, and girl, and now this little Speaker-of- 
the-House-of- Representatives ! ” She had a new name 
for him every hour. 

“I am contented, and thankful,” I said. I spoke 
truly. I went further, and spoke more truly yet. 
“But I ’m not satisfied. I don’t suppose anybody is.” 

“They are if they don’t expect too much just where 
they can lay their fingers on it. It ’s all round. You 
can’t get the Lord God all in one piece anywhere. He 
had to make the heavens and the earth, and all that in 
them is, for that. You must take your pieces as He 
gives ’em out, one at a time! ” 

Her elbows cii'cled, indicatively, great horizons, 
speaking of the Lord God, and the heavens and the 
earth through which He comes down to souls, and a 
quick jerk — a home - thi’ust — pointed her personal 
application. 

They were given to me, — those words of hers, — 
characterized and impressed upon me by her oddities, 
— to be laid up among the “yesterdays;” to come 
forth when their hour should be. They did me good 
then ; but I had to live on, and find out. They waited, 
as the Bible waits for us. 

SatisfiM ! she broke out again, afterwards. “I 
don’t know as we ’re anywheres commanded to be sat- 
isfied. We’re to be content, and patient; it’s the 


432 


HITHERTO. 


prommms that says, ‘satisfied!’ — Napoleon Bona- 
parte ’s beginning to squirm down there out of sight. 
I guess he ’s about ready to he dug up.” 

And she fairly paddled, with elbows outheld and 
quivering, toward the cradle. 


CHAPTER XXXI. 


THE SILENT SIDE. 

AS WELL AS HE KNEW HOW. 

“I SUPPOSE it ’s much as loving ever comes to, in 
this world, — living alongside. 

“I wonder if it was a mean thing of me to take her. 
I wonder if she ’d have found more in somebody else; 
or whether somebody else would never have come ; or, 
supposing he had, if it would have turned out the same. 
The same for her as it is now for me, — living along- 
side. 

“It ’s enough for me to be by her. To know that 
the same things will happen to both of us; that we 
canH run apart and lose each other, in all this world. 

“Do they, though? The same things? It don’t 
hardly seem so. ‘Two grinding in one mill. Two in 
the same field. Two sleeping in one bed. One taken, 
and the other left.’ Where, — yes, where. Lord? ” 

There was a long time, then, that he sat, unthink- 
ing. Not shaping his thought, as these had been 
shaped. Just looking at it in a blind mental stare. 
Looking at this life of his ; the riddle that it was ; that 
it was growing more and more to be. 

“Five years ago, to-day. 

“He’d have been a nice little boy. Talking and 
asking questions. Learning to read, perhaps. Saying 
little hymns Sundays, to his mother, as I said them 
to mine. Maybe he says them to her^ now. Mother! 
Little Richie ! Little, little Richie ! ” 

The man’s hand was clenched hard as it pressed his 
cheek leaning on it. It was the love that grasped for 


434 


HITHERTO. 


his boy; the sign of the thought that held him so fast. 
It was like the mother’s holding tightly to her heart, 
with sobs, the little shoes, the little nightgown, — any 
little thing that had had him in it, — if she opened 
now and then some drawer where such things lay. 
Men do not go and do that, often. But something 
clutches and wrings, — holds close and fast, — when 
the thought comes that is like a tiny presence. They 
do not tell women of these moments, either. They 
get over them alone. Women need not he reminded. 
Let things sleep, if they will. 

Anstiss came up behind him. 

“It is five years to-day, Richard,” she said, as if 
he had occasion to be told. 

“I know it, dear. I was just thinking of it. Just 
thinking what a nice little boy he would have been.” 

He put his hand up and took hers that lay upon his 
shoulder. 

“Give me something! ” she cried imperatively, im- 
petuously. “It is so hard to-night. I have been 
bearing it all day.” 

She wanted a word, — a hope. Some man’s 
strength, better than her own, of soul and faith, to 
hold her up. 

“We ’ll go and take a ride, Nansie. You ’ve been 
at home all day. You need it,” he said kindly, and 
stood up instantly, to go and do for her. 

“I’ll bring Swallow round in a minute. We’ll 
ride out over Pitch Hill.” 

She let him go without a word, and then stood still 
and uttered a sharp “Ah! ” like a scream kept into a 
single point. 

“ Pitch Hill will be no nearer heaven ! ” 

But she went to ride. She had only that to do, 
unless she stood still there and shrieked it out. 

And Pitch Hill ivas nearer heaven, though she 


THE SILENT SIDE. 


435 


might not know. For the calm sunset helped her, 
and the sweet air; and heaven flowed in upon her, 
silently, from the deep, human love yearning at her 
side. Out of it, though unspoken, virtue came. No- 
thing goes back quite void into man’s heart, any more 
than into God’s. 

Richard was cheerful; he talked of pleasant things; 
simple everyday talk it was; he thought that would 
do her most good. How could she know, therefore? 
How could she guess the “Where, Lord?” that had 
been the heart-cry of his pain, an hour ago ? 

So they sat, “alongside.” 

It was almost two years since the child had gone. 
Five, to-day, since he had been born. 

They were neither of them, all the time, as they 
had been to-day. For the most part, they lived 
along, as others do ; side by side in the world that was 
in so many things a pleasant world for them. One 
great pain had come into it, one great joy had been 
swallowed down into darkness ; but they did not sigh, 
or cry, always. It was nearly two years ago. 

Settled down, as people say, to married life. Only 
a man settles more entirely than a woman, or he seems 
to do so. 

Richard Hathaway could not stop, often, to take 
his life out and look at it. Its great fact was accom- 
plished. Out of his love-season, the time of his doubt 
and longing, he passed into calm certainty and every- 
day using of the life that had been given. 

He had no such questions to ask as Anstiss had. 
He had wanted, with his whole heart and soul, this 
that he had got. If this were not pure and full hap- 
piness for him, the wide world — the threescore years 
and ten-- — did not hold it in his behalf. 

For Anstiss, for any woman, — who knew ? 

Man’s nature — his part — is forthgoing, demand- 


436 


HITHERTO. 


ing. Love, that is his pursuit, comes to a woman. 
Shall she take this that comes? Is this the right 
love? She must begin by asking, searching herself. 
Perhaps, like Anstiss Hathaway, she is of a nature 
that keeps asking, searching; testing life all thi’ough 
at every point; testing herself. Yet, for the mo- 
ments in which she thus holds her soul, palpitating, 
under the lens of its own scrutiny, there are days and 
months and years when she just goes on. You may 
breathe deep, however, or you may only breathe from 
the top of your lungs. Very few — do any? — live 
from their utmost depths. 

When Richard Hathaway did doubt, — did test 
himself, — it was to ask as he had to-day, “Was it 
right by her? Could there have been anything better 
for her, if I had let her alone ? ” He who had waited, 
while better things seemed near her, giving them their 
full opportunity, asked this. Who had only loved on, 
as he could not help loving, until one day she took his 
love at last, blessing him immeasurably. 

Coming now through the meadow lands homeward, 
below Pitch Hill, he stopped where the blue gentians 
grew, and went and gathered them for Anstiss. 

“They can say better things than I can,” he 
thought, holding their delicate stems tenderly as he 
came back to her. 

He kept the year all through with flowers, as Chris- 
tians keep a year of prayers. 

They did say things for him; they told of the 
blooms in his heart; they were words that satisfied 
her in the moments when they came. 

She turned and held her face up to him for her 
thanks. 

“You are so good, Richard! ” 

“I ’m only as good as I know how, Nansie! That 
isn’t much.” 


THE SILENT SIDE. 


437 


Why did he always put himself down so ? Did she 
catch the under- thrill of his voice that would have 
trembled if he had not been strong? Could she feel 
the great tide of will and blessing that surged through 
him, as if he transmitted God’s own throb of tender- 
ness for her ? Did she find all that in the kiss he gave 
her thanks ? 

He went himself, when they got home, for the new 
milk Martha kept for her from May-Blossom’s “strip- 
pings, ” lest she should forget to drink it. He stood 
by, smiling, while she emptied the glass of its pure, 
rich draught. Anstiss had not been strong these last 
two years. 

He had soothed her back, in his own ways; they 
had not been just the ways she asked for; they had 
been signs, not speech, — signs only of a simple, 
everyday love ; but they quieted her ; she would have 
hated herself if she had not let them comfort her. 

He went away with something bounding in his heart 
where his own questioning and wondering had been ; a 
joy that he had served her and she had smiled. 

“I don’t suppose that any one could quite look out 
for her as I can, after all. I know her little ways, 
and the things she needs so well. 

“I don’t believe she could have been better off in 
any new, strange life. She wants hushing and quiet- 
ing down; it wouldn’t do for her to be kept on the 
strain. 

“They say a child grows up, sometimes, with a 
hankering, it don’t know what for; something, per- 
haps, it ought to have had when it was a baby. Nan- 
sie never had any mothering when she was little. 
Nobody else would have known about that, as I do.” 


CHAPTER XXXII. 
nansie’s ways; why shouldn’t she? 

“It would be pretty — down at the Knoll,” said 
Anstiss. It was summer-time again. 

Richard looked round with a smile. His smile was 
always so full and so beautiful that she saw no un- 
usual fullness in it now. 

“Yes,” he said, “and cool, too. Some of the boys 
can carry down things.” 

Anstiss waited a moment. 

“You haven’t any — objection? ” she said hesitat- 
ingly. 

“Not a bit. It is the best thing. Have just as 
good a time as you can.” 

“ That was dear of her, ” he thought, as she went 
from him into the house. “Dear of her, to think of 
that. But it ’s all hers, as I told her long ago. 
Hers to do just whatever she likes with. And if she 
is happy there, — why, is n’t that what I kept it for? 
I don’t much believe in Mrs. Cope, though.” 

Anstiss did not think he noticed. Did not think he 
quite understood her half reluctance, and her thought 
that he might have the same, or more. 

But the place that had been good and sweet enough 
to take her to for that best fulfillment of his life was 
none too good to count among the things and places 
that should give him power to fulfill all his meaning 
by her, — “to make her as happy as the day was 
long.” 

With all his goods — with all his bests — he did 
endow her. There had been no beauty, no sacredness, 


NANSIE’S WAYS; WHY SHOULD N^T SHE? 439 

for him, that could be less sacred and beautiful by 
being made most common in her service. 

Walter Raleigh laid down his mantle for the feet 
of the queen. Richard Hathaway laid down rich and 
sweet associations that had wrapped about the days 
and the thoughts of his solitude, desiring them to be 
handled, trod upon, anything, — so that they might 
be the richer and the sweeter, and the gladder, now, 
since the days of his solitude were over. 

It was all he could do; it was the bread and the 
wine; but the spirit and the life were the gift. We 
live among signs and sacraments ; by and by the books 
of the meanings shall be opened, and we shall see all 
holy things within their parables. 

“Let us come over to the Great Mowing,” Mrs. 
Grandon Cope had said. 

She had company at South Side. She had kept 
Anstiss to tea one afternoon when she had driven over, 
and had introduced her to the Cabinet Secretary’s 
wife. 

The farm, through Anstiss Hathaway’s friendship, 
was a kind of graceful appanage of South Side. It 
made Mrs. Cope’s country life and sphere of sway 
larger, more varied in novelty, more beautiful. 
These people who lived in Washington three fourths 
of the year found something joyously fresh and rare 
in this glimpse of utterly different things. 

And Mrs. Hathaway of Broadfields was charming. 
They came to see her as they would go away into any 
still, wild place to see a waterfall, or find a spring 
that bubbled up, without waiting for fashion, in a wil- 
derness, having a flavor and virtue that are only born 
in just such depths. 

Augusta Cope knew better than to bring out heaps 
of city people to see these tired officials; to make 


440 


HITHERTO. 


parties, and give dinners ; even with the fair attrac- 
tions of South Side to lend a rural qualifying. She 
took them quite away, — except vdien she gave them 
absolute stillness and rest, — to Red Hill, or out 
among the Ledges ; to see Mrs. Cryke and drink beer ; 
or over to Hathaway Farm and “our old friends.” 

Nobody entertained with such perfect genius as Mrs. 
Grandon Cope. 

“She was just so about the west room,” Richard 
Hathaway went on thinking. “As if she mightn’t 
make her own home here, in any fashion she pleased ! 
Why, that ’s the way to have it home. It is n’t those 
things that I mind, — when she comes out, and gets 
interested. It ’s only when she draws in and shuts 
up, and I feel like somebody in a fairy story, that has 
married a kind of a spirit, or elf, or mermaid, or 
something, that has ways — high-air, or deep-sea 
ways — that he can’t follow her in, or know anything 
about. Yet, after all, there ’s only one way. 

“She knows I like mother’s ways, for mother’s 
sake, and for old times. But when they were mo- 
ther’s ways it was mother’s life that was in the house; 
it was her day; now it ’s my wife’s day, and they ’re 
her ways. Why shouldn’t her turn come? By and 
by, perhaps, — even yet, — they will be ‘mother’s 
ways ’ to Nansie’s children.” 

But he had said nothing like all this to her, when 
she had wanted the west room new papered ^nd car- 
peted, and the dark chintz hangings taken away. 

He only said, “Surely, Nansie. Do as you like. 
There ’s no need of any scruples about the money.” 

She felt he was kind, as he always was ; but, as al- 
ways, she scarcely knew half his heart, and he seemed 
scarcely to know half hers. 

She made the room beautiful with her own fresh 
taste. 


NANSIE^S WAYS; WHY SHOULD N'T SHE* 441 


She liked full, sunny tints, or strong and deep ones. 
She cared for no blue or rose colored fineries in such 
wise. 

In her own room, which had been Mrs. Hathaway’s, 
— which had always been Mrs. Hathaway’s, — with- 
out making any sudden or radical change, she had grad- 
ually gathered ‘about her much in the cool, shadowy 
green that she best loved for a spot to really rest and 
abide in. 

In this guest-chamber, she put, now, a carpet of 
rich garnet shades, that glowed like a warm welcome 
before the entering feet; the walls she covered with a 
soft buff, like measured sunshine ; and there were cur- 
tains to bed and windows of buff also, hanging full, 
making the whole place mellow and glad, and just 
bordered with the contrasting crimson. The buff 
china that she remembered in her first beautiful visit 
to the farm stood on a corner shelf draped like the 
rest; and for the broad, old-fashioned toilet, flounced 
and bordered in like manner, she had made, in poti- 
chomanie, — buff and garnetj — two tall, graceful, 
stoppered flagons or vases, and a globe - shaped cov- 
ered bowl, that was filled with rose-compote. 

Mrs. Grandon Cope said the room was lovely. 

“Chiefly, my dear, because, with your pretty fresh- 
ening, you have kept the old Hathaway look through 
it all. Don’t give that up. You can’t think how 
different it is from places where people turn upholster- 
ers in.” 

So they were all coming out, and would see it. 

Anstiss had pleasure and pride in her housekeeping. 

They would go out into the Great Mowing, so mag- 
nificent when all the hay was down. 

“Nobody else has anything like it for them,” Au- 
gusta said. “You may be sure of that.” 


442 


HITHERTO, 


Anstiss had on a white dress, and stood in the shady 
old doorway, when they came. Martha, in a “spry- 
colored calico, ” moved back and forth across the 
farther end of the long hall, with lingering step, like 
a figure in the hack scenes, on for effect. 

Hope had come out in the morning. Aunt Ildy 
could not leave Uncle Royle. Hope .wore a brown 
dotted muslin, and her gleaming hair was tied with a 
brown ribbon that lay like a shadow in the gold. 
Hope’s eyes were more like the sunshine — fuller fed 
chalices — than ever. 

Mrs. Grandon Cope filled a great space around her, 
as she alighted, with flowing, brilliant, delicate French 
lawn, striped with the new, vivid shade of blue; a 
large black silk cardinal swept from her shoulders over 
this and parted from the throat in front, showing the 
dress ; her bonnet was of the finest and whitest straw, 
lightly adorned with priceless black lace and azure 
flowers. 

There was rose color, and more white, and violet, 
with laces and ribbons, knd pearl and primrose tinted 
gloves, and little white mists of cobweb pocket-hand- 
kerchiefs, and furlings of fringed parasols like dropping 
butterflies, as the several carriages set down their oc- 
cupants, and the group gathered and pressed gently up 
into the hall over the wide doorstone; and the whole 
entrance was full of dainty fabric and color, and 
sounds of soft, trained speech, and rustle of motion. 

The spry-colored calico stood motionless at the back. 

“My sakes, and gracious, and deliverance! Won’t 
there be a bloomin’ -out in the Great Mowin’ ? I 
s’ pose they can all eat, like other folks, though. And 
I do, therefore and whereas and above all, hope and 
pray there ’ll only turn out to be cream-cakes enough! ” 

Richard Hathaway met his wife’s friends at the top 


NANSIE^S WAYS; WHY SHOULDN'T SHE f 443 


of his splendid upland field, where twenty-eight acres 
of English grass, close as the stems could stand, had 
been swept down into such great heaps and ridges that 
the ground it had grown upon seemed hardly space 
enough to toss and turn it in. 

A dozen men and boys had just done gathering it 
up, dry, perfumy, finished into mounds. 

Richard was in his white shirt-sleeves, rake in 
hand. For the rest, his light summer waistcoat was 
as fresh, and his trousers as smooth and straight in 
their well-befitting lines, as Grandon Cope’s own. 

He stood like a prince upon his own borders, with 
some sign of royalty in his hand, bidding them wel- 
come. 

“I should think you might be proud of him,” 
whispered Augusta Cope to Anstiss, looking on with 
a pleased, flushed smile. 

“She is. Just as proud as she can be,” said Hope 
Devine. 

It was in moments like these, when Richard showed 
his manliest, that Anstiss loved him best. 

Tenderness makes a woman grateful ; a noble man- 
hood compels all her deep instincts of love. 


CHAPTER XXXIII. 


THE GREAT MOWING. 

“What is it like, — so roomy and yet so full? It 
is like something that makes it seem beautiful and 
grand.” 

We walked up and down, in the clear, clean spaces, 
among the great heaps. In and out, endlessly, al- 
most, we might walk over the wide sweep and swell of 
the magnificent field. 

“What is it like, Grandon?” said Augusta Cope, 
laughing. “Hope wants to know.” 

“It is like a great camp.” 

“It is like a city, with domes, and wide, splendid 
streets and squares.” 

“It is like a council of thrones.” 

“It is like a sea, with islands.” 

One spoke after another. 

Still Hope smiled, and waited. 

“Not enough, or not right, yet? ” asked Mr. Cope. 

“Don’t they all seem, too? What makes them 
grand ? ” she questioned shyly, still smiling. 

“You want the idea behind, — the archetype,” said 
Grandon Cope. 

“Yes, back of all,” said Hope. 

“ Do you think you can get it ? ” 

He was interested and amused. 

“I don’t know,” she said, in her rapid, rippling 
way. “It is a great way off from this little hay- 
field, — and all those other things might be between, 
— but it does remind, and it is true. I think it is 
like — the sky, after the worlds were swept up. ” 


THE GMEAT MOWING. 445 

“Well, I think you can’t get behind that,” cried 
the Cabinet Secretary’s wife. 

“I think you can,” said Grandon Cope, with a 
grave quietness. “That only ‘weaves for God the 
Garment thou seest Him by.’ ” 

That was a long way out of the hay-field, for people 
in “clothes.” 

Augusta broke the silence. “I think it is most like 
a great, big, splendid, good time, and an enormous 
game of hide-and-seek. I wish the boys were here.” 

I had been glad to know that the boys were down 
at Fieldport with their nurse and their grandparents, 
when I made the party. But it reminded me sud- 
denly, and with the thrill that those other words had 
already given me, sent a flush to my cheek, and made 
me turn away my face. 

The boy that I wished were here, — the boy in his 
sixth summer! 

Grandon Cope was walking by my side. We were 
the last of the party. 

“Many- chambered, and full. Isn’t it the Heart 
and the Home that all these things ‘seem like,’ Mrs. 
Hathaway ? ” 

He had given me time to breathe ; time to put back 
what had begun to come with a rush, before he spoke. 
Then he said it with such a calm kindness. I was 
able to look up. 

“I thank you, Mr. Cope,” I answered him warmly. 
“How did you know? ” 

“It has been in my mind ever since I came. Ever 
since I saw your husband standing there, in the midst 
and in the ownership of all this. I knew what it 
must be to him, and to you. I have boys to love and 
to hope for, Mrs. Hathaway.” 

It was a great deal easier after that. It was not 
all silk and muslin and flutter and dainty speech. 


446 


HITHEBTO. 


Hope knew, too. By and by she had a word for 
me. She had had many words, in these years of 
which the third was wearing. Every now and then 
she “saw” something for me. 

“Don’t you see, Anstiss, ” she came and said, “that 
thoughts are things ? In your heart you have a plea- 
sure for him, and all this would be a joy with you, for 
him. That is the real part. I think he is glad in 
something, just this very now, that you are put in 
mind how glad he might be. This is your end of it. 
Why not take it for a telling? If you had him here, 
you could only know that he was glad, and be glad, 
too. It is just a thought and a thought. It does n’t 
matter what the word between is. It might be this 
pleasant day and the hay-field; but it is all the king- 
dom of heaven ! ” These two understood best. No- 
body else came straight to my want. 

We went and sat under the Four Oaks. The men 
were piling the hay upon great wagons that went from 
heap to heap, down in the lower end of the Mowing. 
The sun was almost level low. 

They had thrown up the hay for us here, purposely, 
around and between the trunks of the trees. The air 
was heavy with sweetness, and the soft, springy stems, 
just dried, pale-green still with their sealed-up juices, 
so clean and pliant, took any luxurious form we tossed 
them into- 

“It is just perfect! ” said the Secretary’s lady, out 
of a deep nest. 

“There is nothing like hay time in the country, — if 
you don’t have rose-cold,” said Augusta. 

“Can you ride in a ‘rigging’ ? ” I asked them. “Be- 
cause that is the way I mean to take you to tea, pres- 
ently.” 

“On a load of hay? Lovely! But how shall we 
get up ? ” 


THE GREAT MOWING. 


447 

“It isn’t to be a very great ‘up’,” I said. “Some- 
thing constructed especially for us. And I believe 
they are coming with it now.” 

A large, gray-painted hay-rigging, filled, but not 
heaped, drawn by Richard’s two handsomest oxen, 
great cream-colored creatures with black noses, black 
tips to their long horns, and large, beautiful eyes, 
came slowly up over the swell between the haycocks. 
Jabez, swaying his long whip, walked proudly enough, 
in his shirt-sleeves, by their heads. 

“Haw! Gee-haw! Haw, Pres’dunt! ” and the rig- 
ging creaked and wheeled up under the edge of the 
oaks. 

Jabez slid a board from behind the side poles over 
the end to the ground. 

I saw that my surprise was felicitous. The interest 
and the uncertainty were complete and delightful. 
Nobody knew just what next. Even Augusta, who 
had been in the middle as usual, rather patronizing 
and showing off the glory of field and sky, by way of 
elaborately justifying herself in regard to Hathaway 
Farm, looked at this moment as simply wondering and 
expectant as a child. 

We put them in, Richard and I, and took our places 
at the end, to be the first to alight. Then the mighty, 
slow-stepping oxen drew us on, down “among the con- 
stellations,” Hope said, laughing; “through the milky 
way,” Richard suggested. How pleased and proud I 
was of his little joke when he made one ! 

But whither, since we were leaving the house be- 
hind us? 

That they were not to know. 

Down into Pine Lane, through the bar-place, crush- 
ing along on its deep carpet of leaf-needles. On and 
on; President and Governor treading slow; drinking 
in the summer fragrance of the resinous air. 


448 


HITHERTO. 


I suppose they had never done anything so purely 
pastoral as that. Augusta Cope looked whole thesau- 
ruses of admiring adjectives at me. 

But it was no studied stroke of mine, either. It 
was simply the prettiest place, and the nicest way of 
getting there. Yet she evidently felt that I was cov- 
ering myself with glory. I had gone even beyond her 
guaranty. She was more than satisfied; she was ec- 
statically triumphant with me and the farm. 

“You are giving us a perfect pleasure,” said Gran- 
don Cope to me. 

I knew how exactly he meant each measured word. 
I was just a little proud, then, as well as glad. I 
tasted the high flavor of a social success. 

Richard was simply pleased that I should have all 
the praise. 

Martha had done her part gloriously. We had all 
been busy in the morning, she and Hope and I, of 
course. But the final rendering of all things, and the 
consummate coffee, and the delicately brewed tea, — 
these were her responsibilities and achievements. The 
spry-colored calico fluttered in and out of one of the 
little wood - nooks below the Knoll, like a flock of 
strange birds. 

It was to be a haying-party, all through; we were 
not to miss our luxurious cushions, even down here. 
Richard had had a load sent down on purpose, and it 
lay like a divan, in a ridge running around the whole 
summit of the Knoll, in whose centre stood the table, 
made only with boards and barrels, but covered with 
white Hathaway home linen that swept the grass. 

Did they ever see such biscuits, and such white and 
brown bread, in beautiful contrasting piles, I wonder ? 
Or such cream and raspberries, — the red fruit, large 
and cool and fair, lying in great baskets, lined and 
twined with leaves? Or such cream-cakes, and such 


THE GREAT MOWING. 


449 


sponge loaves, cut in long, generous slices that lay 
just apart, showing their golden pores? I trow not. 

Quails whistled out in the fields. A single whip- 
poor-will in the skirt of the woods began its early 
evening song. The pines we had come through rustled, 
high up, as the light evening wind touched their tops. 
A tender-gleaming young moon looked in tremulously 
between the trees, out of the upper horizon light. 

Not a woman there but me had a hall like this to 
gather guests in. It was a lovely thing to be the mis- 
tress of Hathaway Farm. 

I set it all down now, and look at it, as I set it 
down in my mind and looked at it then. It was a 
lovely thing — a dear and lovely thing — to be Rich- 
ard ’s wife; he so kind and loving and giving and true; 
and to be Mrs. Hathaway of the farm. And yet — 
and yet — oh, how I hated and blamed myself, and 
pitied myself, that somehow, somewhere in me, was a 
place not quite fed, not quite satisfied, not truly giving 
itself up to this good man as he gave himself and all 
to me ! 

I tell the truth before my own conscience and before 
God, that what made me hiddenly wretched — the 
thing that thrust up its hateful head like a serpent in 
a Paradise — was the thought, the misgiving, — it was 
only a glimpse and a threatening, for I would not face 
it long and deliberately yet, — not that I was not 
happy with this whole, strange, exacting nature of 
mine, but that I cheated him; that I did not give as 
he gave. Not that I did not as a wife receive all that 
could possibly be in a wife’s cup of happiness, but that 
as a wife I failed and was unworthy. 

It was of no use to ask it now, but the asking would 
haunt me all my life. Ought I to have married Rich- 
ard ? 

If my life had not begun hungry ; if I had not been 


450 


HITHERTO. 


a child without a mother ; if all nature had fitted 
rightly and sweetly to me, and filled me from the first, 
and as I went along, I should not perhaps have been 
this restless, groping, perplexed soul that I was. If 
I had been like those Edgell girls, I should never have 
begun to ask what else there was in the world, or 
whether I should ever find it. I should have taken 
things for granted, and as they came, and my horizon 
would at once have bounded and satisfied me. But I 
was always looking over into neighbor-lives; always 
seeing people at pleasant windows that looked out as 
mine did not look. And so it went on with me. It 
was the disease bred of my half-nurture. 

Augusta Cope bade me good-night that evening, 
warmly, affectionately. 

“There was never anything better done,” she said. 
“I am proud of you, Nannie.” 

“We thank you for a white day, Mrs. Hathaway,” 
said Grandon Cope. 

I went through the house alone, in the dark, as they 
all drove away. I heard Martha talking to a friend 
from Broadfields Centre, who came over to take tea 
with her and help wash dishes. The girl looked up 
to Martha, so old and experienced, and came to her as 
an adviser. She had something special, evidently, to 
talk about to-night. 

“I can’t see it any other way, Martha Geddis, ” she 
was saying. “I ’ve turned it over and over, and every 
way it looks like a Providence. I expect I shall go. 
I believe in Providence.” 

“Well, I’d hold on to that,” said Martha Geddis, 
“anyhow. But I ’d see to it pretty careful that I 
didn’t hurry Providence.” 

I went away into my own room, — our room, — 
Richard’s mother’s. I sat down by the window where 
the little table stood with her great Bible on it, as it 


THE GREAT MOWING. 


451 


always had. Upon the Bible was my little work- 
basket. I pushed it aside, and laid my head down 
upon the book. I was as one who kneels outside the 
temple, not daring to go in. 

Had I hurried Providence? 

Richard Hathaway walked up and down behind the 
house, in the path that led to the Long Orchard. 

“I ’ve only half done it, after all,” he was saying 
to himself, dealing with a new thought that had put 
itself before him to-night. “I ’ve given her my life, 
with the rest all hanging upon that. Little Richie ’s 
gone, and it ’s going on six years. If there should 
never be another — What would a widow’s thirds be 
to Nansie ? What she wants is her home, — this home, 
that ’s everything to her. John ’s well off, and Mary. 
I ’ll put it down to-night, and I ’ll see John Proctor 
Monday. ” 

He went into the house, and sat down in a little 
room where he kept books and papers. He wrote out 
a memorandum of a will. 

“All I die possessed of to be my wife’s, Anstiss 
Hathaway’s, for the remainder of her natural life. 
Her widow’s thirds to be hers absolutely. After- 
ward, the rest to come back to my brother and sister, 
or their heirs-at-law. The homestead, with the land 
originally belonging to it, — the garden, the Long Or- 
chard, and the little north field, — to go to the oldest 
living of the family and name.” 

This was a plain man’s way of loving. He dealt 
with facts. Perhaps it was easier. He knew what 
he had done, when he had done it. 

John Proctor stopped him on Monday, when he gave 
him the paper and was going away to leave him to 
make it into a will. 

“One thing, Mr. Hathaway. It doesn’t seem to 


452 


HITHERTO. 


have occurred to you. You wish to make this quite 
unconditional? Mrs. Hathaway might marry again.” 

Richard Hathaway stood still a moment at the office 
door. 

“Give her one third absolutely, if she does; and 
one third more for her life. Let the homestead come 
back to the name, and the rest be divided.” 

It seemed almost as if he had given her up to an- 
other, saying this. He had a strange feeling upon 
him, riding home. When he saw his wife in the hall 
as he came up, it was as if he had got her back again. 
He gave his horse to a farm-boy, and came straight 
in to her. 

“My little Nansie! ” he said, putting his arm about 
her. It was such a common word wdth him that she 
never knew all there was in it. Yet every time he 
said it, it came out of some new thought of his for 
her, as if he had never said it before. 

If she had known all that was behind it now ! If 
she should come to know it, when she could only re- 
member that it had been! 

“My little Nansie! Has all gone well to-day? ” 

“Yes, dear,” she answered, out of the side of her 
heart that was always warm to him. “Only — Rich- 
ard! You are a great deal too good to me! ” 

“Only as good as I know how,” he said again. 
This, too, was an old word. 

“Am I as good as I know how — as I ever could 
know how — to him ? Away, down, deep ? Am I 
a hypocrite under the condemnation ? ” 

In the seventh year of her marriage, these questions 
had grown up into words, with Anstiss Hathaway. 


CHAPTER XXXIV. 

LIGHT. 

After that, I saw a good deal of the Copes, all 
summer; and I thought it did me good. 

I remembered what Mrs. Cryke had said; why 
should I expect to get it “ all in one piece ” ? Why 
must Richard be able to do everything for me that 
God meant in all this world? Why not let my life 
broaden, if it would, and so be more content with 
every part ? Friends, social interchange, — were not 
these also a great portion of what is given? I had 
been too much shut up with my own particular living. 
I had come to demand too much of it, — of myself. 

I came home richer from South Side, always. 

I met men of science there, — people of high cul- 
ture, men and women. I learned about books, and 
what I wanted to read ; and Augusta was always gen- 
erous in lending. I learned what was agitating in 
the world of thought, of inquiry, of research. I gath- 
ered opinions; I compared and generalized; and I 
thought my apprehensions of life and realities and all 
related things grew thereby. 

Yet at home the smite would come back upon my 
heart sometimes; for I was afraid I grew away. 
Away from Richard, who had no time — no turn, he 
said — for speculations, or analyses ; for following up 
the things that people knew and lived in out in that 
other world ; things that I wished I could go to him 
for. For I did wish it; I was loyal in wishing it, 
still. 

One thing I learned, — I could not help learning, 


454 


HITHERTO. 


— seeing them so much. Grandon Cope and his wife 
were not one, but two persons. 

Augusta was the same Augusta as ever; no deeper, 
no larger of soul ; and I think that Grandon had just 
given it up. It seemed as if they had both given up. 
She was graceful, courteous, mindful of all her duties 
of position ; he was a noble man and thorough gentle- 
man, — to his wife, as to all. But I think they could 
almost say all that they had to say to each other, in 
the presence of the guests they continually enter- 
tained. I think she locked away nothing from him. 
I do not think she had anything to lock away. She 
just lived in the middle, and never cared to withdraw. 

He, great, strong of thought, — not able to give 
himself to her, because, simply, a porcelain cup can 
never hold an ocean, — gave himself out upon all the 
world, upon all the universe of thought and things; 
gave himself toward truth and eternity. 

She recognized this in him, just as the wife of a 
great merchant or financier might recognize her hus- 
band’s fiscal talent and his influence and weight in 
the monetary world, never expecting to understand 
his ledgers or his banking operations ; only proud 
that, belonging to her, he was of himself, also, some- 
thing. Grandon Cope’s powers and achievements 
were to her what his earldom would have been if he 
had had one, and with it had made her a countess. 
She had married his mental rank; and valued herself 
accordingly upon it. 

Yet she could talk sufficiently and gracefully, too, 
upon the last new topics; that was needful in her 
world, and as his wife. She wore the Cope jewels; 
that was Mrs. Grandon Cope’s prerogative. 

Grandon Cope became my excellent friend. I hon- 
ored him with a pure, admiring honor. I received 
from him what nobody else in the world could give me. 


LIGHT. 


455 


I was more nearly and more uniformly content, this 
year, than I had ever been before. There were two 
sides to my life again, and all my life was larger. 

But I had no business to have two sides to my life, 
in such wise. 

The time came when I found that out; found out 
that I was in a false and specious content; that I was 
patching up what should have been perfect and entire 
with that which had no relation to it. This was 
good, but it should not have been needed to make good 
the other. There was evil and fear in it, if it were. 
Fear that it should replace and thrust aside and put 
asunder. 

A whole year went by, — a year of comings and 
goings and living on, — one of the years that it takes 
to make a page in the stories that we tell ourselves, 
— before I began to think of this, before I turned 
round and looked back to see where the time had 
brought me. Many such years might have gone by, 
writing a deep, terrible story in all our lives, without 
much sign or blot upon the surface, but for a thing 
which happened. 

In the end of that next summer, Richard went 
away into New York State, to see his brother John and 
his sister Mary. He had business matters with them, 
and it had also been a long time since they had met. 

I should have gone with him, but that Uncle Royle 
was failing very much, and Aunt Ildy was not quite 
well herself. Hope had a great deal on her hands. 
So I went to my old home for the week or ten days 
that Richard would be gone. Martha had her friend 
Priscilla from the Centre, to stay with her and help 
keep house; Priscilla having as yet not “hurried Prov- 
idence ” to conclusions, but being still in a waiting and 
counsel-beseeching frame of mind. 


456 


IIITHEBTO. 


I was busy, helping Hope, and waiting on Uncle 
Royle, the first few days; then Aunt Ildy’s indisposi- 
tion wore off, and Uncle Royle was more comfortable. 
Hope and I had time for quiet sittings and talks in our 
own room, and for going out a little. 

One morning Augusta Cope came down. She had 
just found out that I was there. 

“Why did you not let me know? ” she said. 

“I only came to be of use,” I told her. “I could 
not expect to have leisure to go about.” 

But in my heart there had been an undefined feeling 
that I would not immediately begin to be happy with 
that other half of me when Richard had just gone 
away. 

“Now, however,” she said, “you are more at lib- 
erty. You must come and dine with us to-morrow. 
We have no company, excejit one or two staying in the 
house. It is not often you can come so easily, and 
Grandon has been showing us some pretty experiments 
lately, which you would like.” 

Well, I promised. 

Why not? Only for this half consciousness of a 
secret sense of freedom, which had been the reason of 
my self-discipline in resolving that I would not be in 
a hurry to let the Copes find me out. 

It was strange to say to Aunt Ildy, the next day, 
so quietly and without contradiction, that I was “en- 
gaged to dine with Augusta.” It was strange to put 
on — before that very glass at which I had tied the 
blue ribbon in my hair, and hidden it away so care- 
fully, like my pleasure, on my first going to South 
Side — my rich, sunny-brown silk and my delicate 
laces, — of my best few, to be sure, but fine and beau- 
tiful as Augusta’s own, — and to fasten the little 
three-cornered, matronly bit that lay upon my hair 
with golden pins, and to take my soft white shawl over 


LIGHT. 457 

my arm, and go down to Mrs. Grandon Cope’s car- 
riage which waited for me at the door. 

For my life I could not help a ridiculous feeling 
that Aunt Ildy would interfere ; at least take off some- 
thing that she thought unsuitable or unnecessary in my 
apparel before I went. 

It was a pretty coup^, with gray horses, — Augus- 
ta’s own especial equipage. The carriage and the 
horses were new; a birthday present from her hus- 
band. 

1 did not compare that with what Richard could 
give to me ; there was no mean covetousness like that 
in me; I desired most earnestly only the best gifts, 
— the gifts that Augusta Cope took only at their out- 
side, as she took these things. All, to her, was but 
surrounding. I could not help thinking of that. 

Neither were the quiet elegance and luxury of South 
Side any more a desire or a contrast to me. I loved 
my beautiful life at the farm. That was as true and 
as delicate, in its own fresh, simple way, as this. I 
was quite content, as I had been years ago, to think 
of the two, and to find a kind of unison between them. 
I was as willing to be Mrs. Hathaway by the side of 
Mrs. Cope, as I had been to see my old friend, Rich- 
ard’s mother, alongside Allard’s mother in the old 
days. 

The elder Mrs. Cope was almost lovelier than ever, 
now. Her hair, turned softly silver, gleamed under 
the same delicate coverings; her gray and white nar- 
row striped silk, with its one little flounce, her lace 
sleeves, her close collar of Valenciennes fastened with 
a single diamond ; her face, and smile, and mien, — 
in all she was as queenly fair and gentle to the eye of 
the woman as she had been to that of the child. 

The word “mother ” still came up in my heart as I 
looked at her. 


458 


HITHERTO. 


After dinner, in the library, Grandon Cope came 
and sat by me. 

“I have something to show you presently, Mrs. 
Hathaway,” he said. “I remember you love color, 
and the color-types. Do you recollect the ‘wall of the 
New Jerusalem ’ ? ” 

“It was one of the steps up for me,” I answered. 
“It was a point in my life.” 

“This has to do with it. How, perhaps you will 
tell me. You know the idea of the waves of light ? ” 

“The undulatory theory; yes. We used to laugh 
at it at school, saying it was the great quaking bog 
into which the philosophers flung all their confusions. 
Everything inexplicable was dismissed with that 
phrase.” 

“But if you think of it as a pulse of God’s life? ” 

He asked it low and reverently. 

“I did,” I said to him, low also, in return. “I 
wondered they did not go further, and say that. I 
knew they just stopped at the shore line between mat- 
ter and spirit.” 

“Do you know what makes the colors in the soap- 
bubble? ” 

“Refraction, of course; like any prism.” 

“But their coming and going, — the order of their 
change. Do you know they come and fade in the 
everlasting order, — the octave of the rainbow, — the 
highest, last? As the amethyst is the top stone of 
the City Wall? ” 

I said nothing. I only listened. 

“ Shall you and I make a soap-bubble ? A sublime 
soap-bubble, with the truth in it? The others have 
seen it. I wish that you should, too.” 

He got up and took me in, through a little arched 
and curtained portiere, to an inner room, a mere re- 
cess within the library, where was a table, with many 


LIGHT. 


459 


little delicate experimental appliances upon it ; a cup- 
board, opening above in the wall, containing jars and 
vials ; a globe standing in one corner upon a pedestal, 
and upon a bracket, in another, a model of some ele- 
gant machinery in a glass case. 

“I will not take it out there to-night. We will 
have it quite to ourselves.” 

He drew forward upon the table a little silver cir- 
cular frame, — a mere rim, — lightly supported, and 
quite empty. 

“I shall set a bubble in that, and make it stay; 
that is, if I have good luck, ” he said. 

And he went to the wall-cupboard and took down 
a low, open, wide-mouthed jar, and a little silver- 
mounted pipe. The jar had soapsuds in it. 

“Not common soapsuds exactly,” said he. “A lit- 
tle bewitched. Will you blow the bubble, or shall I? ” 

“I am afraid I shall break the charm,” I answered. 

He dipped the bowl of the pipe, and blew a clear, 
round globe, carefully, to a size correspondent to the 
little silver frame ; and then gently and nicely lodged 
it in the rim, and detached the pipe. 

“I think you have somehow strengthened the 
charm,” he said, smiling. “I hardly ever succeed 
with the very first ; and I wanted especially to have it 
perfect to-night.” 

Then he moved it cautiously, placing it under a 
porcelain-shaded reading-lamp, which threw a con- 
centrated force of brilliant light upon it. 

“Now you will see the colors come,” said he, “as 
the bubble thins. Just as they would have done if I 
had blown it bigger. It is a little rainbow in har- 
ness. Do you know how it will begin? What you 
will see first ? ” 

“It ought to be the red.” 

“It will be.” 


460 


HITHERTO. 


As he spoke, I saw it coming; the fine, vivid crim- 
son, flushing up under the rays of the lamp ; spreading 
down, down, like a sunrise over a little world. 

“But I never saw a bubble like that! ” I cried. 
“ They always come in two or three colors, on different 
sides ; running round and round, and showing through 
and through.” 

“I told you this was subordinated. But that is 
just because of the thing I am going to tell you. 

“ The waves of light, — the pulses, — the same 
from every little centre like this that they are from 
the heart of the sun, — come in measured lengths ; the 
red longest, because the pulse is slowest; the violet 
shortest, with its inconceivably fine and quick vibra- 
tion ; and every little film on earth that catches them 
receives just its own color, as its thickness or thinness 
corresponds — responds, perhaps I should say — to the 
stroke, and takes up the beat. Do you see the gold 
coming ? ” 

A clear and perfect joy above the softening flush; 
a mellow beauty lightening more and more, holding 
the pure sphere in a loving glory; the crimson fallen 
down, till it lay, still receding, diminishing, around 
the under hemisphere, and just above the horizon rim; 
the gold pouring, pouring in its turn, like an intense, 
enfolding rapture. 

“But why do they not flash here and there, as they 
do when children blow them ? ” 

“Because this was blown with as regular a force as 
possible to make it even ; and because it was not dis- 
tended too far. Now the varying thickness depends 
upon the settling down of the liquid toward the base; 
so the red drops, and the gold comes over; see, there 
is the green ! ” 

Still the crimson lay beneath like a memory of fire ; 
above, the purged and molten gold; and now, creeping 


LIGHT. 


461 


from the topmost, the fullness, the rest, the livingness 
of the deep, bright, satisfying green. 

Like an emerald sea; stealing down gently; all the 
little globe flooded with it graciously ; changing, 
changing; purifying into blue; the gold let fall, and 
resting on the vanishing line of crimson; the green 
sleeping upon these; the tender azure calm coming 
down, like a heaven of peace. 

Clearer and clearer grew the thinning sphere ; it was 
like fine blue air; like a sky fragment; it trembled, 
as a visible breath. 

We held our own. Will it go, before it has done? 

Thinner, thinner yet ; only the faintest, purest gold- 
light, and soft blue-green, and quivering blue; the 
gold gives way; it is not wanted any more; the min- 
gling of the green is gone. It is pure, holy, distant 
sapphire. 

Grandon Cope just lifted a finger, as if he would 
say. Look! We would not stir the air with a word, 
leaning toward the spirit-wonder. 

It was violet, now. We could not tell how the 
blue went by. Now, it was neither water nor air ; but 
an ethereal flame, — delicate, intense ; something we 
seemed to see, as it were, inwardly; it was such a 
far, impalpable beauty. Deepening, — rarefying, — 
receding. There was an impression of a marvelous 
instant ; we felt what amethystine meant ; and it was 
gone. 

The silver rim stood empty. 

I let my head fall down. I felt as if somebody 
had died, and I had caught a gleam of heaven as the 
spirit went in. 

“ It has been more than a bubble-play to you, ” said 
Grandon Cope. 

Was it a bubble-play to them ? 

“Mr. Cope! It was a human soul! ” 


462 


HITHERTO. 


He said nothing; only looked into my face, that I 
had lifted, with deep, fervent eyes. 

“It was fire and passion; it was human joy; it 
was life and fullness; it was purifying and peace; it 
was the inmost heaven, — at last ! ” 

“You have seen! ” 

Then he stood up. 

Was it my own self that whispered to me, or a 
tempting spirit, in that instant of seeing, of uplifting? 

Why, across the beauty of what he had given me, 
came the flashing consciousness of the recognition those 
deej) eyes had for me, in the utterance of our common 
thought ? 

Why did I think of Augusta, laughing with low, 
pleasant grace, in that next room, among her guests? 

Did I say it to myself? “He never could have 
looked upon her so ! ” 

I do not know whether I thanked him or not. 

I got up to go away into the other room. 

Grandon Cope’s voice made me pause again. He 
was gathering up the things that he had used. 

“It will all come,” he said; I could hardly tell 
whether to me or to himself. “But we must rest in 
the rims God puts us in.” 

It flashed out of me, — the question born of the 
keen truth. The truth I saw in life; his life, and 
mine. 

“ But what of the rims we put ourselves in ? ” 

His strong, just, obedient spirit looked forth at me 
from pure, swerveless eyes. 

“That He lets us put ourselves in? We must be 
patient in the rims Hq finds us in.” 

I had asked to go home early, for I could not keep 
Aunt Ildy up, and I knew she would not go to bed 
till all was locked, and the house settled. 


LIGHT, 


463 


The coup^ came round at half past nine. Augusta 
slipped out into the hall to say good-by, and Mr. 
Grandon Cope went with me to the carriage. 

He put me in, and stood upon the step, handing me 
my shawl and some books that they had lent me. 

Neither of us noticed that the coachman left his 
horses for a moment. 

He was a new servant; if he had been with the 
Copes longer, he would not have done this. I do not 
know what it was for; I believe he said afterward it 
was only to throw some blanket into a doorway. The 
horses started. Mr. Cope glanced to the front, and 
called out a stern “ Whoa ! ” For the space of a 
thought he stood upon the step; it was an instantane- 
ous calculation. It was too late to reach their heads, 
and the door was swinging open. 

He sprang inside and shut it. 

We heard the servant rush forward; we knew he 
grasped at the reins ; we caught a cry, half impreca- 
tion, half dismay ; we knew he had lost them ; that we 
were alone, and the horses guideless. 

Grandon Cope let down the wide front glass. 

He reached himself half through, across the driver’s 
seat, as if he would get out that way, and obtain the 
reins. He saw them dragging, I suppose, far out of 
grasp. 

The horses, frightened now, were galloping. We 
were out of the avenue, upon the hill. 

Then he drew hack, and looked at me. 

“Keep quiet and strong,” he said. “Something 
wiy stop us before long. The carriage is new, and 
thickly cushioned. We shall come out of this.” 

Then he turned, bracing a knee against the low, 
front half seat of the coup^, — for he could not, of 
course, stand upright, — and looked forward again, 
watching. 


464 


HITHERTO. 


I do not know whether we are conscious of fear in 
the very midst of danger, as we are when it is only 
threatening. I do not think that in the actual crash 
of that electric bolt which came down above our heads 
in the old Polisher house, I felt so much as afterward, 
when I dreaded that it might come again. There is a 
strange sensation, — “This is it! It is here!” — 
which snatches us into a terrible intimacy and relation 
with the peril, that will not let us look at it from far 
enough to know its terror, as we do before and after 
that embrace. 

I do not know what it was I felt, as I sat there by 
Grandon Cope’s side, with the horses running away, 
down the hill, toward the bridge. 

I made no sound. He kept his face forward, look- 
ing intently through the open front at the bounding 
horses, and the waymarks of the road. 

We thundered over the bridge, into New Oxford 
Street. 

I heard the shouts of men. I knew a crowd was 
gathering, and running by our side ; a changing crowd, 
distanced, and still renewed. 

I wondered, passively, what the end must be. 

I, too, could see, and watch; with all the intensity 
of strained nerve, and keenly quickened apprehension. 
The night was bright. I knew well every bit and pass 
of the way. 

We were in the broad River Street. 

There was an old house being taken down, that 
made a projecting corner, at a crossing. A rough 
fence, inclosing it, took in a third part of the high- 
way. 

The turning here, a short one, led right down upon 
the open wharf. 

He knew y© must bring up there. There, or — the 
carriage was so fatally new and strong! 


LIGHT. 


465 


Clear as light was the thought that thrust itself upon 
me then. Sharpened, distinct. I could neither resist 
nor deny it. I can never deny it to myself or in the 
sight of Heaven. 

“ I shall go out of the world — God knows where — 
with this soul that is beside me ! ” I can never deny 
the thrill that was not all awfulness. 

I remembered Hope’s saying: “I wonder what He 
will do with me next ! ” 

It was God’s doing. 

I looked at it in a strange, intense expectancy. 

God sent me back into my life again; after He had 
showed me myself. 

There was a whirl — a shock — a sound of crashing, 
as if many little helpless sticks were broken, — it 
seemed like that. It was the strong axle of the car- 
riage. 

We were thrown headlong; the coup^ went down a 
slight embankment, and turned directly on its top. I 
was wedged in^ weighed upon ; my neck bent painfully, 
my head buried and pressed down with I knew not 
what. The blood rushed behind my eyes. I thought, 
“Now, it has come. Now, my neck will break.” 

Then something loosened by me; I could move; 
could struggle. I was being helped, lifted. I was 
out in the air, in Grandon Cope’s arms. 

I was dizzy, faint; I tried to stand; then Mr. Cope ^ 
put his arm about me again; then I heard somebody 
say, “I do not think she is hurt.” It was Mr. Cope; 
but his voice sounded far off. 

I suppose I fainted away. I had never done it be- 
fore, and I thought I died. 


CHAPTER XXXV. 


THORNS. 

He carried her in his strong arms down the whole 
long street. He took his wife from Grandon Cope, 
and walked away with her as if she had been a little 
child. 

He had stood at the doorway of Royle Chism’s 
house, watching. He had got home that afternoon. 

He had seen the horses come tearing down the 
hill. 

He knew that it was the Cope carriage, and that 
Anstiss was in it. It went by, sweeping, swaying 
round the curve, and dashed up the street; driverless, 
the reins dragging and tangling. 

He rushed after it, his arms flung out, as if he 
would reach from behind and seize it back with his two 
hands. 

The two men stood, bareheaded both, beside the 
shattered carriage. The crowd came up. 

Mr. Cope gave Anstiss Hathaway into her husband’s 
hands. Richard went away with her from among 
them all, whispering over her, breathlessly, as he 
strode along, — 

“My poor little wifie! Poor little frightened 
Nansie ! ” 

She came to herself, with the motion and the jar, 
just before they reached the door. She felt herself 
borne along; her eyes opened toward the blue night 
heaven, upon the distant, burning stars. 

“Why! why!” she gasped tremulously. “What 
is it ? Which world am I in ? Oh, Richard ! ” 


THOBNS. 


467 


For his face bent down above her instantly. 

“Don’t kiss me! I was tempted of the devil! ” 

“What did she mean? Was her mind touched? 
Will she be ill ? ” 

Anstiss lay still upon the bed, and Richard watched 
her. Aunt Ildy had given her wine, and bathed her 
head, and rubbed her limbs, and felt of every bone, 
and then had made her take the unfailing six drops 
of camphor, and left her quiet with her husband, and 
gone, herself, to bed. 

Hope was in the next room, and would be called if 
anything were wanted. Stillness was the best thing. 

Grandon Cope had come to the house, to ask about 
her. He had told Richard how it was, and then with 
a friendly grasp of the hand, and a thankful congratu- 
lation that it was no worse, had said he must hasten 
homeward, to relieve anxiety there. 

Men were coming with the horses. He borrowed a 
hat of Richard, and walked on. 

If Richard had even been a man of evil mind, or 
had lived more among the evil of the world, he could 
not have thought ill of this frank, high, simple gentle- 
man. Anstiss’ words could have no touch of relation 
to him. Richard Hathaway truly never thought of it. 
He was too high himself. 

They were mere wildness, or they were out of some 
fresh phase of the old, mysterious discontent. 

“I almost wish she would do something wrong; 
something she could look at outside of herself, and I 
could forgive her for, ” the poor, patient, loving fellow 
thought. “She is wearing, wearing, all the time; 
eating herself up. Everything takes hold away down, 
where I can’t reach or help. She is always holding 
up her soul to me with a thorn in it.” 

He did not know that it was poetry and pathos ; it 


468 


HITHERTO. 


was a natural illustration out of his homely, gentle, 
compassionate life. 

He knew how to help dumb things in their hurts ; 
his wife he could not help. 

But he could sit there all those midnight hours, 
watching her sleep; hoping, fearing, how she might 
awake; not knowing what the shock had done. She 
was so timorsome, so sensitive. 

By and by she moved; awoke. 

She said she should like a glass of water. Richard 
brought it instantly, gladly. 

“Why, it is you! ” she said, recollecting. “When 
did you come back ? ” 

“Just in time, Nansie, to take care of you. Just 
in time for you to frighten me thoroughly. What 
were you and Mr. Cope running away for? ” 

He had to make some simple little joke, — the first 
he could think of. He was so glad. 

“Oh, Richard! I didn’t mean to! I don’t want 
to run away from you, in anything. I want you to 
come too, always. I do want to be a better wife, 
Richard! ” 

There it was again. The string that was always 
quivering. 

“Be a good girl, now, then, and go to sleep.” 

She raised herself upon her arm, and looked around. 

“Why, Richard, it is the middle of the night! 
You mustn’t sit up there. I can’t go to sleep unless 
you do.” 

“Then I will. I will come to bed directly.” 

He moved away, took out his watch and wound it, 
laid off his coat upon a chair, and then went and stood 
a moment by the window. 

The soothing of the camphor had had its way. 
She had not shaken sleep quite from her. Her eyes 
were closed again, and she was still. 


THORNS. 469 

Richard delayed and waited. She thought he was 
coming, and she fell asleep. 

Then he put the candle out, and drew his feet out 
of his slippers, and lay down beside her, quietly, in his 
clothes. 

He was not easy about her yet. 

I tried to tell Richard about it, when we got home 
again, out at the farm. 

But what could I tell him? 

Just that flash of thought? Or all that that flash 
showed me ? How could I make him see ? 

It was what might have been ; nothing that was ; it 
was a glimpse of good and evil ; good missed and for- 
bidden, and so evil; evil that should never be. 

I could make no words of it that should be true; it 
was only a word between God and me. A word that I 
must bear to hear in the stillness. A thing that I 
must bear to know possible of myself, — myself, Rich- 
ard Hathaway’s wife. 

And then, what? 

To go on, taking all his love; giving him what I 
could. 

The pain was, that this seemed all he wanted. 

“It won’t do to keep raking things up to see what 
they are. That ’s your mistake, Anstiss; I don’t 
understand it. It ’s only misery and excitement. I 
never believed in dragging out evidences and experi- 
ences in religion. I don’t believe in it any more be- 
tween man and wife. The more you look after things 
and get anxious about them, the more it seems as if 
they weren’t there. Take it for granted. You be- 
lieve in the Lord; believe in yourself, and in me.” 

Did he know — did he remember — he said the 
Lord’s own words? 

“We are married, and we must just go on.” 


470 


HITHERTO. 


That was what he answered when I said to him 
brokenly, — half questioning, half confessing, — 

“What if I knew better than ever, Richard, that I 
don’t give you half enough? That there is something 
in me I might give ? ” 

We were married, and we must just go on. 

That was the way he said it. It seemed to shut 
me in, and nail me down. 

And yet Richard was so good, and I meant to love 
him so ! Anybody would be tired of me, to hear me 
tell all this. Nobody would have patience. 

I was tired of myself. Tired, and ashamed. But 
I wanted to be true. I wanted Richard, at least, to 
know just what I was. 

He meant to do her good. He thought most of her, 
as he always did. He set before her the plain fact 
of her life. He would allow no weight to her fancies, 
her self-accusations. But he kept back the sting they 
gave him. 

“I suppose I know what she means; what she 
thinks she means, just for the minute. But she 
doesn’t, and she never shall. I ’ll never understand 
it; and she shall never have it to think of that I have 
understood it of her. It will all pass by, so. 

“A man might be a little crazy, even, and get over 
it, if he never had it to think of that other people 
knew, or mistnisted. That ’s where they give up. 

“It shall be all right between Nansie and me. 

“God help me if I ’ve brought her here and should 
ever let it go all wrong ! ” 

He sat on a stone in the shady Low Pasture; he 
was on his way down through his fields. He held his 
straw hat crushed between his hands. There were 
knotted veins in his temples, and there was a flush 
about his eyes. 


THORNS. 471 

Richard Hathaway’s bright, kind face had hardly 
ever looked like that. 

Did she know what it had been to him to say those 
commonplace words that “shut her in and nailed her 
down ” ? 

“We are married; and we must just go on.” 

It needed little between these two. If he had said 
the same thing in other fashion, — the thing that was 
truly in his faithful, enduring soul I 

How did it differ, after all, from what Grandon 
Cope had said, — “We must be patient in the rims 
He finds us in ” ? 


CHAPTER XXXVI. 
hope’s witness. 

Uncle Royle died that autumn. 

After that, Aunt Ildy’s life seemed to waver in her, 
querulously, like a candle-flame whose wick has burnt 
through the remnant of its nourishment, and dropped 
loose in its socket. 

There was a ring of living left ; but the spirit flashed 
hither and thither within it, painfully, restlessly; not 
knowing how to join itself to or feed upon it again. 

It never would feed upon it any more, strongly and 
steadily; it would only, float and glimmer; as that 
which remained should melt and crumble slowly around 
it; and suddenly it would go away, into the dark. 

We all saw how this would be. She saw it herself. 
She waited for it, counting, secretly, her own pulses 
of pain, and the weary time ; wondering when the 
flickering would be over. Strong people break down 
so, when the break comes. 

“She’ll go soon,” Lucretia said. “She’s begun 
to look in the glass. Figgeratively, I mean. She 
sees her own pudgickiness ; and it ain’t so much to be 
seen, neither, as it was ; but folks sees over their 
shoulders, when they come to look. ‘I believe it ’s 
my crossness that keeps me, ’ she says to Hope one 
day, when she could n’t stretch the sheet as tight and 
smooth as a fire-board, to suit her. ‘Just as vinegar 
does pickles.’ And I donno but it does. It ’s the 
vim, what there is of it.” 

The hardest thing in my life, that winter, was that 
Richard would not intrude upon it. 


HOPE^S WITNESS. 


473 


I had my books and my thoughts; my household 
cares and interests; he left me very much with these, 
going his own quiet way, except as he could give me 
any practical help, or as things of necessity concerned 
us mutually. 

He was as kind as ever; it was not avoidance; it 
was rather a great reserve, like a dammed-up stream. 
I myself had thrown the bar across. I had told him 
I could not give; he would not demand. 

We should “just go on.” 

Not that he was not tender, either; but he was not 
gladly, freely so. 

He seemed to think he troubled me. 

He made me feel as if I had crushed him down. He 
could have taken no more exquisite way of punishing 
me. 

I had complained that life was not enough. It 
was being taken from me, even that which I had. 

Even that? I began to know, dimly, what I was 
losing. 

I was all adrift. I had forfeited earthly love, and 
I had not found God’s. 

I knew this, now. That I had only thought about 
it, seen it beautiful from afar; stood without, count- 
ing the stones of the wall; not looking for the door, 
that I might enter in. 

What was I to do? Give up my life? Consider 
it failed, lost, wasted; thrown away, utterly and for- 
ever? Give it up here, at eight and twenty years? 
Call it judgment, — the rest of it, — and conviction 
of sin ? 

Give up his, also, and ruin it ? 

That way lay madness, — hell. 

The life beyond? The life that for one wild, 
wicked moment, I had thought I was ready for, and 
that God was ready to give me ? 


474 


HITHERTO. 


How did I know? I said I had not found God. 
What could I expect of that life, having failed mis- 
erably in this? What should come of the seed that 
was black-moulded in the furrow ? 

So I walked on, in a blind shadow. 

My old life fell away from me ; the last sign and 
framework of it went down, leaving me to stand alone 
in the life that I had made. 

Aunt Ildy died before the spring. She took cold, 
and the doctor said it was pneumonia. That was the 
outside ailment. We knew when the wind came, 
“ out of the sea, ” smiting the one point of her nar- 
rowed intense vitality, and when she began to die. 
That is the point behind, which doctors never do know. 

Lucretia went away, down East, among her kin- 
dred. 

John Eveleith hired the house and the store of me, 
married a wife, and brought her there. 

Hope came back to the farm. 

I took home Aunt Ildy’s linen and silver, and all 
her household treasures. How strange that seemed ! 
Her spoons, her pillow-cases and tablecloths, — why, 
they had always seemed augustly different from any I 
could ever have! Hers was real, old, solemn house- 
keeping. Mine was as a child’s, — a make-believe. 
I wipe those teaspoons reverently now, with the fear 
of her eye upon me. 

It was brighter for having Hope again. It always 
was. Out-doors, and in-doors; weather, housework, 
needle-work, books, — all were pleasanter and cheerier. 

Richard looked more as he used to do, — before I 
came, and worried him. Something of the old times 
crept back, even across the spoiling I had made. 

We had a book, one day, Hope and I; a story we 
were reading. “How real it seems, this living in 
hooks! ” I said. “As if we opened some secret door. 


HOPE'S WITNESS. 


475 


or looked down out of some sky into a human world, 
seeing the whole of it ; knowing the whys, holding the 
spell, and the key, that we might drop, or whisper, 
and help it all out with. Only that we can’t reach 
into a dream ! How strange it is that hooks should 
ever have been made ; that there should be such a life 
inside our living! That it should be so much to us, 
and yet that it should be really nothing at all! ” 

“It would have been stranger if the books had not 
been made,” said Hope. “Then there would have 
been something in the world without any shadow or 
image. Because the reading is true. There ’s always 
a reading like that ; and a watching and an entering 
in; and we We the stories. It’s to let us know, and 
to learn us how.” 

“ I wonder if anybody is reading over me, — over 
W5, ” I said, for I was impatient of the miserable 
“me.” 

“Yes, ever so many,” answered Hope. “God is; 
and the ‘innumerable company! ’ I am, Anstiss.” 

“Read on, then. Turn over the leaf.” 

“God turns over the leaves; but a little wind raises 
them, sometimes, and I — standing by, you know — • 
can catch a word, or a line, or the look of a page. I 
think I have seen what is coming.” 

“Tell me, then. There has no leaf turned over for 
ever so long, Hope ; I have looked till the spelling is 
all strange ! ” 

“Then you have come out of the real reading. 
That is what we have done when we begin to see the 
letters so. You must go in again; you must forget; 
then you will see; then the leaf will turn. And you 
will. That is what I see for you. I see, for. all this 
heavy reading, — close and packed with hard thinking, 
that the little children always skip, — the story com- 
ing again; things happening; bright words; it looks 


476 


HITHERTO. 


‘pretty’ again; it grows simple and easy. Anstiss, 
there is love in it. There is love in you, dear, that 
you don’t half know of yet; love that will ache, if you 
don’t let it be glad; it must make you know, some- 
how. Never mind the hook and the leaves; you are 
the hook.” 

She flung it away, as it were, with a gesture of her 
hand. 

She came over to me. 

“I see you. And I know it is in you to he a sweet 
joyful woman, taking God’s love out of the hand He 
sends it hy, and giving back that He has trusted you 
with in return. For him; for Richard; and — think! 
he will never get it except from you I ” 

She had come close to me, and knelt down beside 
me; her arm was round me; her face looked into 
mine ; there were tears in her glowing eyes. 

“You see I know so well it is in you,” she re- 
peated. 

“It is in me, Hope; but it wants something! It 
can’t live. He might believe, and I might believe; 
the right, the need, might be in each of us ; but if it 
is hushed up, — if it wants a language ! ” 

“Well; He maketh even the dumb to speak. The 
word shall not return to Him void, but it shall prosper 
in the thing whereto He sends it. You must believe 
that his word for you is in Richard Hathaway’s 
heart. You must be glad of it even before it comes; 
as you were of that little child before it came, Anstiss. 
It will come in heaven, if it does n’t all come here.” 

“Oh, that little child! ” I broke forth, crying. 
“It is as if I never had it. I cannot think I ever 
did.” 

“Yes; you — ever — did,” Hope answered slowly, 
giving me the thought as it came to her. 

“The strangest time — if it could be — would be 


HOPE'S WITNESS. 


477 


the time that wasn’t. But everything always was. 
You never did not have little Kichie! ” 

“Hope! You strange woman! ” 

My tears dried, astonished. 

“You see it is all so safe, — from the beginning. 
We cannot miss of anything, or lose anything. That 
little, tender love was with you, — in you, — all your 
life; waiting. You just had the short sign of it, and 
then the cloud took it again. ‘Our life is hid — with 
Christ — in God.’ I ’ve just thought of it so! And 
God glorified him with the glory that he had with him 
before the world was ! ” 

The light, instantly received, was in Hope’s won- 
derful eyes. 

“ How do you get these things ? ” I asked her, mar- 
veling; as the Jews asked the Lord. 

“They come,” she answered simply. 


CHAPTER XXXVII. 


WHAT HOPE TOLD RICHARD. 

Hope came down into the long barn. 

She had a little willow basket in her hand; going 
to look for eggs, in the great, sweet mow. 

Hope always found eggs ; just as she did her white, 
beautiful thoughts. They were right there; ready 
laid for her ; how could she help it ? 

The search was “like something,” as the hay-field 
had been. In a wide sweetness and generousness and 
rest, wonderful things lay hidden, put away for her to 
come and find; things pure, like pearls; with life in 
them, also. In the secret places, and in the quietness. 

There is something strangely pleasant and sugges- 
tive in the stillness of a great country barn, when one 
is all alone in it. The mysterious nearness comes 
about one that is only felt when one is away, apart ; 
in some safe, beautiful hush. 

Hope went up the steep, narrow, smooth-worn 
stairs, brown and polished with much treading, and 
years of seedy plenty. There was a space around the 
front, on the upper floor, past the great window, lead- 
ing over to the mangers. From this the hay sloped 
up, filling the warm, fragrant chamber. 

She went up a little way, climbing the elastic heap; 
then she sat down a minute, taking in the sweet com- 
panioning of the loneliness; she never liked to go for 
eggs in a hurry. 

Then she heard movements by the mangers, away 
over behind ; some one of the men was there, tossing 
down hay. 


WHAT HOPE TOLD EICHARD. 


479 


But presently came Richard’s voice, — 

“ Hope ! Is that you ? ” 

“Yes. I ’ve come for eggs.” 

She heard him move around toward her, brushing 
the rustling hay as he pressed along. He approached 
slowly; when he came before her, he stopped, put one 
foot up on a low, gathered ridge of the broken mow, 
leaned his arm across his knee, and pulled out hay- 
stems, which he doubled and bent and turned in his 
fingers. 

“Hope! tell me what to do,” he said. 

Hope’s heart heat quick. She did not say “About 
what ? ” as most would have done, to break silence, 
and to lead him on. She knew what it was. ^ 

“God will tell you what to do, Richard,” she an- 
swered presently. “He does. You do do.” 

It is almost too simple and unfinished to write 
down. They were the first words which came. The 
meaning and the feeling overleaped them. They said 
a great deal to Richard Hathaway. There was a great 
deal more for him in Hope Devine’s heart, which 
neither they nor any words could say. 

“I think I want to be told what to undiO. I can’t 
go back. How can I make up ? ” 

“That isn’t the word, Richard. You are laying 
up all the time. You must just he, what you are; and 
wait until she sees. Then her heart will be all broken 
with love and repentance — one of these days. It 
can’t help it.” 

Hope’s voice trembled. 

“She grows thinner and thinner; she worries, and 
blames herself. There is a great growth in her that 
she wants to give away, — that she thinks she ought 
to give to me. And I — can’t hold it. I ’m a simple 
man, Hope ; I can just live on and do for her as I 
know how. It ’s like the story in the Bible; she 


480 


HITHERTO. 


hasn’t where to bestow all her fruits and her goods; 
she needs to pull down her barns and build greater. I 
don’t know, Hope, but I ought to let her go! ” 

“Richard! ” 

“I don’t mean to break everything up; that isn’t 
the way of quiet people like us; and I can’t put her 
back, as I said. But I might do something. Old 
Mr. and Mrs. Cope are going to Europe by and by; 
in the summer. I might let her go with them. 
Would n’t they have her? ” 

“ Oh, you great heart ! ” cried Hope Devine invol- 
untarily. 

“No,” said Richard, lifting for an instant eyes that 
had a surprise upon their sadness. “Only honest. 
Only doing as I would be done by, as near as I can.” 

“ Only that, ” said Hope, with the same tone in her 
voice, restrained. 

“Would it be better? ” 

“No,” said Hope instantly. “Don’t think it of 
her that she would go; and don’t think it of yourself 
that all Europe is any bigger or any better for her 
than you can be. Why, Richard ! ” she went on, light- 
ing up ; “ this is a beautiful farm of yours, and worked 
and tended beautifully. And full, all over, of kind, 
sweet things, pleasant to have, and that people must 
have every day; but after all it ’s only the top of it! 
You don’t think you ’ve got at, or brought out, all 
there is! It’s yours, for all that any man can say, 
way down to the very middle; to the rocks, and coals, 
and fires. And think of the things that are there; 
the things that are laid away! Whenever they are 
wanted, they will be found and come to light. Now, 
the farm is the best, perhaps. In other places the 
ground is tossed and torn up; and there is no quiet, 
small planting and growing ; but gold is coming out, or 
iron, or coal. There are men’s minds and lives like 


WHAT HOPE TOLD RICHARD. 


481 


that. God orders it, and it is good. But He has put 
yours here, to wait awhile. Yet you ’re as rich, and 
as deep, and as strong as they are; and it ’s out of the 
strength of the deep things that the pleasant things 
grow. It ’s all in you, Richard; and if she looks for 
it, she will find it — some day ! I suppose that is 
what people are married for; that they may take a 
great, long time, away beyond the world, perhaps ; if 
it were all made out and measured from the first, what 
would the living be for ? It is a will he ; it is n’^t 
an is.” 

“Sometimes it begins sooner, though; I don’t want 
all her life to be a hungry waiting. Hope ! I think, 
— people say it without much thinking sometimes, — 
I think I could lay down my life for her.” 

He said it very gravely and gently; there was no 
exclamation point in his voice ; it was a plain, true 
period. 

“I think you could. ‘Greater love hath no man 
than this, ’ Richard. And love is the greatest of all. 
You two love one another.” 

“We — two?” 

Something in those slow, separate words, and that 
emphasis, touched for Hope a yet higher chord of per- 
ception. 

“And yet two do not make a perfect love,” she 
said. 

It was strange how she sat there, this girl^ saying 
what she had not had it in her mind to say a minute 
before ; speaking, truly, as the Spirit taught her at the 
instant how. Every act, every word, every perception 
in life, brought her always, surely, to the next; she 
stumbled and she failed at nothing, because she walked 
in the light. 

It was strange, too, that she sat there, saying these 
things to this man, whom she might have loved and 


482 


HITHERTO. 


married. She just gave it as it was given to her; as 
she was sent to do. 

Richard Hathaway looked up again. 

“ Two do not make a perfect love ? ” 

He did not understand. He thought, instantly, of 
his little lost Richie; of the dead Richie, buried in 
Broadfields church-yard out there, over the hill; of 
the vacancy in their home; of what might have been 
between them two. 

But this girl did not mean that. She would not 
tell him of this loss, this lack, in such manner. 

His eyes, his grave, lifted brows, questioned and 
waited. 

“No. It must be joined. It must be a whole 
thing, and perfectly beautiful, before it is done. It 
must be — ‘in the Lord. ’ ” 

Hope’s face was like the face of an angel. She saw 
afar off. The word, that fed her always, came, rush- 
ing in upon her spirit, like the tongues of old. She 
saw things that she did not really know. She spoke 
of what she had never thought of or been taught. 

“Isn’t that what the triangle means? Isn’t it 
only because some line of light comes down to each, 
that there must run a line between? Why, I don’t 
know anything but the name of it ; but I think that is 
what Trigonometry stands for; the signs of the lines 
that measure all through heaven, between the souls! 
Three lines are the least that can make a form of any- 
thing. Three sides make the prism, and divide all 
the beauty. Isn’t it everywhere like a network of 
beautiful threads, — the love that is between each two 
of us, and between each one of us and God; holding 
us all together? Is n’t that where the thought of the 
Trinity came from ? God, and his Son, and the world ; 
and the Spirit, reaching all through? For, He loveth 
the Son! and He so loveth the world. And then, — 


WHAT HOPE TOLD BICHABD. 483 

if the world will love the Son, — it is whole, it is one, 
it is safe again ! ” 

She forgot, half, that she was talking. Her mind 
sprang from point to point. She turned, as it were, 
the crystal of her precious thought in her hands, and 
the lights flashed forth, as from the facets of a dia- 
mond. 

Heart and voice thrilled all through when the last 
came ; came and was spoken as instantly as the rest ; 
hut the tone lowered and intensified, and the eyes 
looked more afar, and the face was yet more ra- 
diant. 

Richard stood still; his head bowed a little, as if a 
prayer had been made in a church; he was hushed 
with surprise, too ; people do not often talk like that ; 
he had no answer, certainly. 

Besides, there was always in him the old feeling, 
grown of early training in the New England notions 
of religion, that he had no right ; that he was not a 
participant; he let it go by him, with a wistfulness, 
perhaps, but that was all; as he let the cup of the 
communion go by him in the church. 

“Hope,” he said presently, speaking from this 
feeling of withoutness, “I have never experienced re- 
ligion.” 

“Yes, you have,” said Hope quickly. “Every- 
body has — No ! Nobody has ! I mean — it is the 
will he. It takes forever, Richard. If you have only 
begun to be married, how can you more than have 
begun to live with God ? ” 

“But there must be the beginning. The conviction, 
the giving up, you know ; all that ; and I have never 
come to it. I am a plain fellow, Hope; I can’t go 
deep in anything. I must just live on.” 

“ ‘ He that loveth, dwelleth in God, and He in him ! ’ 
‘ And if in anything ye be otherwise minded, God shall 


484 


HITHERTO. 


reveal even this unto you. ’ It will all come, Richard ; 
just as sure as you now love every living thing. 

“ ‘ When I am kind to others, then 
I know myself forgiven.’ 

“Some old hymn says that, and you make me think 
of it.” 

Tears stood in Richard Hathaway’s eyes. 

He straightened himself then; flung away the hits 
of hay he had been breaking and measuring, and said 
to Hope as he made a movement to go, and end the 
talk : — 

“I don’t know as I ’ve got hold of anything; but it 
seems as if I had. You make things look somehow 
different. If there was only more in me ” — 

“I tell you it is all in you. You are greater than 
you know you are, ” said Hope, rising and coming 
down beside him. “And if it wasn’t, you know what 
He told the woman, — ‘ Go, call your husband, and 
come hither.’ It’s all in Him. And when we are 
close to Him, we are close together, and there ’s just 
one giving for both. And the lines are joined, and it 
makes — why, I remember now, Richard, there ’s a 
triangle in music ! — it makes a clear beat of joy ! ” 

Richard Hathaway put forth both his hands, and 
took hers in them. 

“The first thing you ever told me, Hope, was your 
name. And you ’ve been telling it to me ever since,” 
he said. 

Then he let her go, and turned away, down the 
steep, old stairs. 


CHAPTER XXXVIII. 


BLIND FERNS. 

One day, that spring, Grandon Cope rode over to 
the farm. 

He had some business with Richard, and went down 
after him through the fields. 

He brought also some volumes of Ruskin for me, 
and when he came back to the house, he stopped to 
tell me about them. 

“You will thoroughly enjoy Ruskin,” he said. 
“He goes where you will most delight to follow. He 
finds the thought that is in things. He does not stop 
at any cold analysis of art, or technicality of science; 
he touches, reverently, the great secrets; the Word 
that is in the world. He tells you of beautiful im- 
pulses and limits in tree growths, and their life- 
instincts seem to you like souls. You stand with him 
among the mountains, and you feel God.” 

“Sometimes,” I said, “I almost think I had better 
keep out of the mountains.” 

I suppose my trouble was in my face, and in my 
voice. 

Grandon Cope looked at me kindly, inquiringly. 

“I don’t bring it down. If I were right and true, 
I should not need to go so high or deep. And things 
would not puzzle me so.” 

I had my fingers upon the books, searching idly 
among their leaves. 

“‘To bring Christ down from above, or up out of 
the depths ? ’ No ; we know we do not need that. 
Yet I think such apprehensions as Ruskin ’s help 


486 


HITHERTO. 


and kindle. I think they are a great good in the 
world. ” 

“It seems as if I went off, alone, after the best, 
with a kind of presumption. I ought to find it and 
live it, among them all. Right here, with Hope, and 
Martha, and Richard, every day. Hope does. She 
does n’t need great things. It is always in her mouth, 
and in her heart. I feel mean and false beside her, 
pretending to high things, and reaching nothing.” 

“Hope would like this, too,” said Mr. Cope. I 
think he hardly knew how to understand me. 

“Hope has a right to like it. She is real and beau- 
tiful, all through. But I am not thanking you, Mr. 
Cope. I do, very much ; and I shall not be able to 
help reading, and enjoying, whether I deserve or not. 
But I wish, ” — I said this after a pause, — “ it would 
be so much less selfish, — I do wish Richard cared ! ” 

He saw through my miserable dissatisfactions, then. 
He saw where my life halted. He laid his hand upon 
the books, which I had left. 

“Dear Mrs. Hathaway,” he said earnestly, “don’t 
read this, or think this, or anything, if it makes you 
seem further from your husband. You can come near 
to nothing nobler or truer than he is. Reading and 
writing are about the Eternal Beauty. Living and 
loving are close to and in it. There are spirits of 
love, and spirits of wisdom; and the spirits of love 
are nearest. Heart-truth is the reality ; thought-truth 
only the reflection. ‘Blood is thicker than water.’ 
These things are water only ; drops of the water of life, 
maybe; but the blood — the love — is the life. Jesus 
came by the water, and the blood ; but it was his blood 
that he gave for the life of the world. Richard Hath- 
away has received of this. He is blood-related to it 
all. I am filled with reverence when I think what 
such a grandly real and simple nature will come to in 


BLIND FERNS. 


487 


the kingdom of heaven. It was of that childlike 
directness, that unconscious, great out-living, that the 
Lord said, ‘Take heed that ye despise it not; for it 
doth always behold the Face of my Father.’ ” 

Brave, and true, and generous. Spoken as one soul 
to another; as few men could or would have spoken to 
a woman. 

A common, indifferent man might have been con- 
temptuous of what he saw in me, — if, indeed, it could 
have been shown to him, or he could have understood ; 
a true man, self-conscious and timid, might have 
shrunk and been afraid ; a selfish — a bad — a tempted 
one, — well, women have been near such in their mo- 
ments of need and bewilderment, and what was I that 
I should have been safer than they ? 

He dared to tell me not to despise. He dared to 
touch close my hidden unsoundness ; to show me Rich- 
ard, my husband, as he stood, noble and beautiful, to 
his perception, and ought to stand to mine. He could 
see, not a want, but a pure and large awaiting in him, 
that should be surely and gloriously filled; he could 
bid me discern and wait beside it ; if, haply, I might 
be worthy yet to dwell anigh when the river of God’s 
fullness should flow through. 

He dared to do it, instantly; to strike to the very 
core and marrow of the truth; to speak to me as 
Christ spoke to the Woman of Samaria. 

“Did you ever see the blind ferns in spring? As 
they are looking now, under your walls ? ” 

I had never seen or noticed them so. 

“We are all like that,” he said. “Folded up, 
more or less, according, perhaps, to the tenderness 
and beauty in us, — till we get above the earth and 
stones, safe out into the upper air and glory. It is 
the dream we stand in, side by side, as they do. 
Some of us have opened a few fronds, quivering, half 


488 


HITHERTO. 


unfurled; wondering and shrinking among the roots 
and thorns ; some stand tall and strong, reserved ; kept 
for a larger and more perfect grace. You must go 
out and see your ferns, Mrs. Hathaway. They will 
tell you many things.” 

He made me ashamed, and yet he paid me a rever- 
ence. I was worth being spoken to so. He believed 
that I desired the truth, and would bear it. And 
Richard Hathaway could bear being spoken of. There 
was nothing in him — no lack or absence — that 
needed to be ignored. 

I know I should have hated Grandon Cope if he 
could have spoken otherwise. That is why I cannot 
quite understand what happens sometimes, in just such 
perplexities of women and just such friendships, ap- 
parently, of men. 

I went out that next day to see the ferns. 

They stood there, all alone under the orchard wall, 
in nooks between the broad, rough stones; on turfy 
knolls about the rugged roots of trees. 

Hooded, and bowed ; a folded grace, an unrevealed 
glory. They were like spectres, chrysalids ; unmoving 
in the soft spring air; unknowing themselves or each 
other; rolled into that strange, uncouth form, giving 
no sign of what they should be; fitted only for push- 
ing up into the light that should draw forth their 
tender, wonderful beauty. 

Here and there was one just awaking; looking tim- 
idly round into the new world out of its sleep ; look- 
ing upon the blind ones close by, tarrying their change, 
that was close by also. These saw it not in them- 
selves, what it should be, nor in those, what it was 
already. They were the freed and the unfreed. 

Two or three days more, — what mattered it, the 
difference or the waiting, then ? two or three days 
more, — a few rollings of the great sun through the 


BLIND FEBNS. 


489 


deep and generous blue, touching patiently leaf after 
leaf on his spring-path over the greening latitudes, — 
and they should stand in feathery prime, saluting each 
other with broad, delicate fronds ; heaping high, beau- 
tiful banks of plumy verdure, like clouds of emerald 
mist rolled up around the stanch old pillars of the 
trees, and about the pale, gray rocks. 

I stood and read. 

“We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be 
changed.” 

Nothing shall sleep, or wait, forever. We might 
be patient for ourselves. We might be believing for 
each other. We might be more gladly conscious of 
the blessed world to come, which is only a world of 
light and air about us that we are blind to; into 
which some, yet rooted near us, have opened out their 
perfected life ; opened out into God, in whom also we 
bide, and shall unfold. 

But is this blind biding all, for this world? Are 
we all fern growths? Is that what people are mar- 
ried for? What they love and long for? Only to 
stand, and reach, and grope, side by side, and still 
alone? I could not make it answer everything. All 
living did not seem to me like this. 

A step came up behind me. It was Richard. 

He asked me what I was doing there; asked me 
gently, with the pleasure in his voice there always was 
at first, when he came upon me anywhere, not having 
looked for me. ^ 

“Are we two like that?” I questioned suddenly, 
pointing to the ferns. 

It was too sudden. I had no business to speak so ; 
I did not mean to. I do not know why I did; out 
of the recoil of my thought, instead of from its first 
true, fresh impulse. How could he see anything but 
the folded solitariness, — the estrangement? 


490 


HITHERTO. 


His face changed. The pleasantness died out of it ; 
quenched, as I had the horrible power to quench it, 
and the strange fatality to do, in those days. 

“I do not know, Anstiss. I cannot follow you in 
all your fancies. I think it is damp for you to be 
standing here, and that you had better come in. ” 

I turned and went in with him. What was the 
use? 

I came down out of my fancies. 

I made a tansy-pudding for dinner that day; the 
delicate spring dainty that Richard was fond of. 

I tried to be happy in the homely, wifely way. 

I wonder if he saw that I tried. I think he did. 


CHAPTER XXXIX. 


THE “next ” FOR HOPE. 

What was the reason that nothing took hold, or 
stayed by? That I could look at these things, see 
them, read them, rejoice even against myself at the 
truth that was in them, and then turn away into my 
life, finding it just the same, — making it no different ? 

I know now. I began my Bible at the wrong end. 
I looked in all things for an apocalypse, instead of for 
a simple gospel. What Richard’s mother had said, 
years before, was true then, and had been true in all 
my life, ever since. I forgot Matthew, Mark, Luke, 
and John. I had got to go back and read through 
all these, before I could come to Revelation. 

I looked at the truth, and I saw it lovely; but I 
did not purely and guilelessly enter in. I looked at 
God. I did not live, like a child, in the great, safe 
Heart of my Father. I beheld through some of his 
beautiful signs, as it were my own face in a glass, and 
went away forgetting. I did not know that the letter 
alone, rich and glorious though it might be, should kill 
me ; that the dear and intimate spirit only should give 
me life. I reached after knowledges; I brought back 
treasures from afar; then I was like the laden camel 
at the gate of the city; he should sooner go through 
the Needle’s Eye than I should, that way, find the 
kingdom and the peace everlasting. 

All the while, with a love the tenderer for this pain, 
the truer for its denial, the life at my side was speak- 
ing, teaching me; saying always, “And yet show I 
unto you a more excellent way.” 


492 


HITHERTO. 


The “might have been!” That stood between. 
It did, — it did ! 

Maud Muller was not the first. 

Thousands of women — good, or meaning to he 
good, turning swiftly away from the very shadow of 
evil — have caught, without looking for it, the strange 
side-glimpse of this shadow, sent from some far-off or 
far-back shining. 

I knew it might have been. I could not help the 
knowledge. 

I have thought it out in the days since then; the 
days long since these others that I call up now; in 
those I should not have dared to think of it deliber- 
ately; yet it was in those days that the secret percep- 
tion came. Did I sin the sin of the heart ? I asked 
and answered myself this, afterward. 

The deeper I went on into life, the better I knew, 
however secretly, how, with a very little, all might 
have been different. 

It would have seemed to me in those first years, 
long ago, before either of us married, such a strange 
and great and wonderful thing to have had a love come 
to me like Grandon Cope’s, that I never looked for it ; 
never dreamed a dream from which the awakening 
would have been shipwreck of hope. It only passed by 
me near enough for the light upon its golden wings to 
dazzle me ; to leave a pain that I hardly understood, 
except that it was an ache for a time afterward, in 
looking upon duller things. 

But it did not seem strange to me to have his 
friendship, now. I knew that he was strongly drawn 
to me ; that he found much in me answering to what I 
found in him. I knew that it would not have been 
utterly strange and impossible, given other conditions, 
that we should have come to be that to each other 
which man and woman may he, hut which, out of the 


THE ^^NEXT" FOR HOPE. 


493 


myriad men and women who catch at life haphazard, 
as it seems, — the myriad men and women born and 
placed and drifted here and there, apart on the earth 
and in the generations, — apart by little jolts of mis- 
direction like a blinding fault in a mine when the lead 
may be close by, — hardly two of a lifetime ever do 
come to be perfectly; all this thrust itself into my 
consciousness, deep down, among the things we know 
and will not know. 

r knew that, being true, it was manifest to him 
also; that his being upright, and great of soul, and 
pure of purpose, did not hinder, could not hinder, in 
Grandon Cope some glimpse of this; it only took away 
some of the possibilities that remained. 

There are unspoken perceptions like this; there are 
things we shall be able to look at in the light of the 
life to come, that we may not look at now. 

But was it a wrong, — a horrible mistake, — my 
marrying Richard ? Where was the sure instinct, — 
the spiritual correlation, — if he could love me so, — 
“with every thought and fibre of him,” — and I not 
give him back the like.^ 

How came Grandon Cope to love Augusta Hare ? 

If these are mistakes and wrongs, they are mistakes 
and wrongs that are every day allowed to be. 

Out of all my life, up to this day, I have found but 
one solution. We make mistakes, or what we call 
such. The nature that could fall into such mistake 
exactly needs, and in the goodness of the dear God is 
given, the living of it out. And beyond this, I believe 
more. That in the pure and patient living of it out 
we come to find that we have fallen, not into hopeless 
confusion of our own wild, ignorant making; but that 
the finger of God has been at work among our lines, 
and that the emerging is into his blessed order; that 
He is forever making up for us our own undoings ; that 


494 


HITHERTO. 


He makes them up beforehand; that He evermore 
restoreth our souls. 

But I could not think this then. 

I could not even live hack into what I had lost. 
Richard was too true, too simple, to understand the 
vibrations of a douhle-aspected life ; to see how I could 
sometimes put away that which was myself, to rest 
in a quieter, a safer and more bounded self ; how his 
changeless and faithful strength held me and satisfied 
me there, as it always had done; how I longed to he 
truly and wholly one with him. 

He was tender of me, as if he had done me some 
great harm that no tenderness could make up. Our 
life moved on with an outer peacefulness; nobody 
would have thought that we were ill, or half, assorted. 
But the gladness, the youth, were gone out; we were 
a man and woman walking on through the middle wil- 
derness; he had followed me out of the Eden, and 
kept loyally by my side ; and I had only him. 

One day, Mrs. Cope herself came out from South 
Side to see me. She went little from home, in these 
days ; she was become an invalid. Her ill health had 
crept from a negative to a positive condition ; it had 
been, for years, — always, nearly, — a mere absence 
of robustness ; of late, people said she was “ failing ; ” 
and her physician counseled change, which had often 
been of benefit before. She wanted the sea; she had 
better go to Europe again. 

“I want a great thing of you,” she said to me. 
“A very generous cooperation. I want you to help me 
to get Hope Devine’s consent to go abroad with me. 
Laura and Kitty have their homes and their cares; 
Augusta and Grandon will perhaps come out and join 
us for a time, somewhere ; hut there are the little hoys, 
and I could not wish, either, to keep them restricted 
to our quiet plans. I need some one with me all the 


THE ^^NEXT'^ FOE HOPE. 


495 


time; not a servant, or a nurse, but a friend; just 
such a friend as Hope would be. Will you say a word 
for me ? Will you spare her ? ’’ 

How “ all these things ” were being added to Hope ! 
How her life flowered out, without her taking thought ! 

I could recognize a beautiful thing; a thing that 
should be; I was glad for her with all my heart. 

“I am sure she will go,” I said. “I shall not be 
able to have any merit in it. I will call her down to 
see you.” 

Hope was upstairs, putting away linen; we had 
been looking it over together ; she had taken out some 
to mend ; it was work that she did delicately. 

“ Hope, ” I said, coming up behind her, and laying 
my hands on her shoulders, “you will have to put back 
those tablecloths to wait for my darning. There has 
some other work turned up for you to do. Mrs. Cope 
has it for you. Will you come down and see her? ” 

“Mrs. Cope! — it is some pleasure! I know your 
face, Anstiss ! ” 

“I don’t believe you do, — upside down! ” 

She was looking up at me as I stood behind her, — 
she sitting on the low cricket before the press drawer, 
with all the sorted piles about her on the floor. 

“ It is — ‘ what is going to be done with you 
next,’ ” I said thoughtfully. I began to be curious 
for Hope Devine. Every turn of her life was a sure 
move in an unspoiled game ; a beautiful development ; 
a touch — whether it were a shade or a high light — 
upon a picture growing into perfectness, upon a canvas 
without blot or blunder, under a Master-Hand. 

Then she put from her what lay upon her lap, and 
arose. 

“It is something very serious, — very important,” 
she said. “Something with an ought, perhaps an 
ought not, in it, Anstiss.” 


496 


HITHERTO. 


So she turned to the looking-glass for a moment, 
passed her hand lightly across her shining hair, either 
way, took off her little white apron, and we went 
down. 

Mrs. Cope herself told her what she had come for. 

She sat silent at first, when she had heard ; she lifted 
and lowered her eyes, glancing here and there uncon- 
sciously, as if she looked for something ; she was search- 
ing in her mind for the impediment it seemed as if 
there must he. Could it be so easy and so plain that 
she should say, right off, “Yes, I will do this beauti- 
ful thing. I will go with you to Europe ” ? 

“ Why ! I don’t see — yet — any reason why not, 
Mrs. Cope ! ” 

She could not have told her readiness, her ajDprecia- 
tion, better than by that surprised allowing. 

“ But then, I have only begun to see — any of it ! ” 
she added, laughing. “How quickly things do hap- 
pen ! ” 

“Yes; when they happen right, ” said Mrs. Cope. 
“You have not asked when, or how long. We shall 
sail in a month from New York for Southampton; we 
shall be gone a year, — perhaps two. It will depend 
on health. We mean to go first to the Isle of W’’ight; 
then to Paris, and later in the season to the south of 
France, to stay awhile among the Pyrenees; in the 
winter, we shall be in Italy; and next summer, if all 
goes well, in the Swiss mountains and in Germany. 
We shall stay quietly in each successive place. It 
will be living about; not traveling much. Journeys 
are short in Europe.” 

“I cannot think how it should come to me! ” said 
Hope. 

“You may have much disappointment, after all,” 
said Mrs. Cope. “I may be ill, and need a good deal 
from you. You may be in the midst of beautiful 


THE FOR HOPE. 497 

things and have to forego them. We cannot tell any- 
thing that may happen in two years. I only ask you 
to share my chances, and to help me through.” 

“Dear Mrs. Cope,” said Hope earnestly and sim- 
ply, “it will be a beautiful thing to be with you. And 
if I can help you, or do for you, — I hope you will 
always he sure that nothing can really disappoint me 
except not answering in that. I should not dare to go 
if it were not for that. It would be too much to take. 
Two years are a long time. Can you and Richard 
spare me for two years, Anstiss ? ” 

“I am glad to have something that I also can do 
for Mrs. Cope,” I answered. “Only it is not my 
doing. I could have no right at all to keep you. I 
can only give you up most cheerfully to her. And 
Richard, — you know how he gives.” 

“ I think it is an ought, ” said Hope, with tears in 
her eyes that were like sunshiny rain. “An ought 
and a may together.” 

All her life was. 

I told her so. “Trouble has nothing to do with 
you,” I said. “I do not think it ever came to you, 
to stay.” 

“It may have brushed by me, — in the dark,” said 
Hope. 

We were busy after that, in getting her ready. 

When we had let her go, we were, for almost the 
first time, left to our own uninterrupted life together. 
All the old was gone from me, as I said before ; but 
when the home at New Oxford first broke up, it had 
given us Hope ; now we had quite passed over into what 
had never really begun before ; the sole thing we were 
sure of, — the belonging, utterly and only, to each 
other. This hardly ever befalls, so early, with mar- 
ried people. The change comes slowly, to most; it 
takes years of gradual happening; and all the time, 


498 


HITHERTO. 


ordinarily, the new life is enlarging, replacing the old 
before it drops away. With Richard and me, there 
had been so little to change. 

Augusta and her husband traveled that summer, as 
usual; they were at the seashore, with their children; 
they went to Lake George and Saratoga; they stayed 
with the Allard Copes, at Edge water, on the Hudson. 

We were busy; Richard in his fields, I in the house, 
and in my dairy, with Martha; our story went on, 
underneath, hut there was no story to tell. Why 
should there he a story, when we were old, settled, 
married people ; married these nine years, nearly ? 

The only person who saw through th^s “ well enough ” 
of the outward was Nurse Cryke. 

We went over there, one day. 

She elbowed me aside, up into a corner, when Rich- 
ard was untying the horse. 

“It isn’t all straight,” she said, standing at right 
angles, to face me with her exclusive organ of expres- 
sion. “You and he ain’t old enough for this.” She 
lifted up the shoulder and the flexed arm, slightly, as 
one might the brows, in questioning significance. 

“I only told you he was part Grandison, you know. 
I told you you could n’t have the Lord God all in 
one piece. But you ’d better make much of the piece 
you ’ve got. Somehow, the spring ’s gone out of Rich- 
ard Hathaway. He ’s flatted down. And that signi- 
fies, with a man, more than it does with a woman. ” 

She sent me away with this. 

I knew that Richard had not been quite well. The 
heats had been oppressive, and he had worked hard. 
He never spared himself. And lately, he had, once 
or twice, had dyspepsia ; a strange thing, for such pure 
vigor as his. I did not know that that was how worry 
begins to kill a man. Begins a long way off, perhaps ; 
it has to, when there is no weak spot nearer the life. 


THE ^^NEXT’^ FOR HOPE. 


499 


Richard’s life, splendid as his physical manhood 
was, was a tender thing; a thing to suffer, like a 
woman’s; as some women’s cannot suffer. Was there 
a spring deadened ? 

A fearful shudder ran through me as the question 
pressed home. I drew nearer him, sitting beside him 
in the low, roomy old chaise. We were riding through 
the wooded road. 

“ Richard, dear ! Are you quite well ? ” 

How his face lightened as he turned round ! I al- 
ways spoke kindly to Richard; it was not that; but 
my heart went out in the sudden anxiousness of that 
asking, and he felt it ; he who seemed, ordinarily, con- 
tent without much manifestation; to take for granted, 
and just to go on. 

“Why, yes, Nansie! Why?” 

“Oh, I don’t think you are! Nurse Cryke doesn’t 
think you look well. And you ’re all I ’ve got in the 
whole world ! ” 

He did not take it to mean so much as it did; it 
would be hard to persuade such delicate humbleness as 
his, once having turned it back upon itself. 

He put his arm about me, though; it made him 
glad, as far as it went ; and he was pitiful of me. 

“Poor little woman! ” he said. “You are lonely. 
But you need n’t begin to borrow trouble about me. 
Nurse Cryke had better keep her elbows down. I ’m 
well. And I don’t think ” — 

There was a wonderful sweetness in his voice, hut 
he did not finish what he had begun to say. 

“I don’t think, if I wasn’t, I could ever give up 
and go, while you wanted me.” 

This was what came up in his heart, and what he 
had begun to say. But it was put back. It was left 
upon the Silent Side. 


CHAPTER XL. 


UNDERTOW. 

“Oh, Mis’ Hathaway!” cried Martha, meeting me 
at the door. “There ’s awful news! Jahez has been 
in to New Oxford, and he see the Copes’ man from 
South Side, so there ain’t no kind o’ doubt about it, 
I don’t suppose. I declare I don’t know nothin’ how 
to tell you, or what you’ll say! Come into the set- 
tin’ -room, any way, and lay off your bonnet first, and 
take it comfortable. Well — there! it ’s the doom o’ 
livin’, and we can’t tell, any of us, when our end will 
he!” 

I walked into the sitting-room, to gain the time. 
The news was almost told. Except for the answer to 
the fearful question, “Who? ” 

That I stood still to ask her, though I trembled 
from head to foot. 

“Don’t touch the blinds,” I cried. She was throw- 
ing them open, as a surgeon might do, to get full light 
for some terrible operation. 

Martha had that strange relish for the dreadful 
which is only satisfied with the last detail, and with 
watching every point of its effect. “All the partick- 
lers, and how they all took it, ” were what she must 
know, if such a thing must needs happen. 

I pulled my bonnet-strings away from her, as if she 
had been a hangman, when she came fumbling at my 
throat to loosen them and make me ready, to the last 
point, for the stroke. 

“I can hear it as I am, Martha. What has hap- 
pened ? ” 


UNDEETOW. 


501 


I thought of Hope. Truly, I thought of her first. 
I thought also of Grandon Cope. They were the two 
of whom South Side news — ill news — would come 
closest and most terrible. 

“It was down at Cape May. They ’d gone there 
with the other Copes, and some folks from New York. 
They went in bathing, or swimming, or something, all 
together ; and she went too far ” — 

She! 

The next thing I knew of Martha, she had got sal 
volatile at my nose, and my hair and my bonnet- 
strings were all wet. She had tipped me back in the 
great rocking-chair, and put the hearth-brush under 
the rockers. 

“For gracious sake. Mis’ Hathaway! Do come to, 
afore he gets in ! There, — as true as I live, I 
thought you was dead gone ! ” 

“ I was only dizzy for a minute ; you frightened me 
so. Tell me the rest.” 

“I’m a blessed saint if I do. Why, I hadn’t 
begun! I never see anybody take anything so. But 
it is awful, that ’s a fact! ” 

“Martha, tell me every word. You are frightening 
me to death. Was it Mrs. Cope? Mrs. Grandon 
Cope?” 

“I suppose you will have it, now. But I thought 
you could ’a’ bore it a little better. Yes; it was 
Mrs. Grandon Cope; she that was Augusta Hare. 
She ’s always had things happenin’ to her that nobody 
else ever did, and now this is the cap-sheaf ! ” 

“She isn’t dead!’^ 

“She’s gone,^' said Martha solemnly. “The first 
thing they knew was she wasn’t there. Something 
sucked her under, — some kind of a tide, they say. 
Or else, it might have been the cramp.” 

“Let me up, Martha.” 


502 


HITHERTO. 


She took the hearth-brush away, and let the chair 
return to its natural position. 

I sat still a minute, with my face in my hands. 

“Is that all?” 

I thought they must have tried to save her; I 
thought some one else might have — 

It was awful enough; but was Martha keeping any 
more horrors back ? 

“Yes. That ’s all they ’ve heerd as yet. They 
were watching for the body, miles along all down the 
shore. They ’re in hopes the tide will bring it in.” 

“ Oh, Richard ! Augusta Cope is dead ! Drowned 
at Cape May! ” He had heard, from Jabez. He had 
come in to me. 

I burst out crying, then. I could cry for Augusta. 
I think if it had been Hope, or Augusta’s husband, — 
if either of them had gone out of the world, — I 
should have bled slowly, at my heart. 

“Poor little Nansie! You have a great deal to 
bear ! ” 

Why didn’t he say little Nansie! ” as he used 
to do ? He had left that off. 

Many days after, Richard took me over to South 
Side. 

Grandon Cope had come back with his wife’s body. 

There, in the pretty garden-parlor, she lay, in a 
closed coffin. 

Shut away, forever. Bruised, dead. 

On the black velvet, that fell to the floor around 
her, lay flowers, — lilies, pure white carnations, tube- 
roses. 

I went in alone. 

I shut the door, and stood in the silence. That was 
what she was in the midst of, now. Silence, mystery. 
A great secret hushed with her, forever. The great- 
est thing that ever happened to her was the thing she 


UNDERTOW. 


603 


never could recount. It was the strangest to me, of 
all. That which she, only, had known; that which 
she could never utter. 

How she had gone down; how the great, stealthy 
grasp of the mighty undertow had taken her ; how the 
wild sea had surged in at her ears when she went 
under; what she had seen in her soul in the luminous 
instants of going; how the two worlds touched; how 
she slept; how she waked. Only dumbness. 

She was sublime, now; sublime as the stars in their 
silences. 

There were words said for her; her name went up 
to God; her soul stood with Him and heard it. 

Wife, — mother, — she had been here ; they prayed 
for her husband and her little children. What was 
her new name there ? 

I could not think with the prayers. I could only 
think of the strangeness. 

That she should not come back, and tell ! That all 
this could be, and she he so grandly quiet ! 

Was she changed, or was she the same self, else- 
where? Were they gathering round her above, hear- 
ing that wonderful death- journey ? 

Martha said the same thing, in blunter, less rever- 
ent fashion. 

“I can’t get over expectin’ her to come in, and talk 
it all over. It seems’ as though she couldn’t do 
nothin’ without tellin’ folks how! But there! I dare 
say — if ’t ain’t wicked to think of it — it’s half 
over heaven by this time ! ” 

Grandon Cope was very grave and calm. The shock, 
the horror, were over before we saw him. 

How much was over for him ! The life-experiment 
tried and ended. Joy, or disappointment, or quiet 


504 


HITHERTO. 


acquiescence ; hopes repressed or hopes fulfilled ; pleas- 
antness, discipline; all these done with; all arrested 
just where they were, with the It is enough! that only 
One Breath can utter. 

He came over to the farm ; he came to us for quiet 
friendship. He brought his little hoys, and led them 
out into the pleasant fields. He was very tender with 
them. 

Richard was tender, too, with the motherless ones. 
He took them down into the woods and out upon the 
river. We all went, in the boat, up into the shadows 
and stillness. 

We talked of her; of her brightness and gracious- 
ness; of her smooth’, kind way, that made everybody 
easy with her. There are always beautiful things that 
we can say of the dead. 

I could not tell, now, what had been wanting, or 
wrong in Augusta. I do not know of any positive 
mischief, or flagrant selfishness, that she had ever been 
guilty of; and there was much in her facile, politic 
ways, her infinite social tact, that made a peace and a 
sunniness in outward things, wherever she was. But 
it was not like Hope Devine’s sunniness. Augusta 
smoothed life, — in the little circle that radiated from 
herself ; Hope infused a living blessedness, and induced 
new centres. 

Yet I wondered if “blessed are the peacemakers ” 
might not include, in its broad benison, even such a 
comfort-giving as Augusta Cope’s. 

Grandon Cope told us he should take his boys and 
go out to Europe. 

His mother’s health, he feared, was hardly better. 
They would be in Florence for the winter, and he should 
establish himself near them, and give his time to them 
and to the teaching of his sons. He would be likely 
to remain abroad a good while. In a year or two the 


UNDERTOW. 


505 

boys would be old enough to be placed at the Sillig 
Institute at Vevey, which was what he had always 
intended for them. 

“ I must do all I can, ” he said, talking with me in 
the little parlor, the day that he had brought them 
over for their last visit to the farm. They were out 
everywhere, as usual, with Richard. 

“I must do all I can for them. If they cannot have 
the best thing, — home, — they shall have the next 
best, — a large piece of the full world to gather fruit 
in. They shall have art, and history, and language 
off the trees ; with the juice in them ; not boxed up and 
dried. One cannot be uncheerful, or unsatisfied, Mrs. 
Hathaway, with other lives to reach out through, and 
to receive with.” 

“I count you happy,” I said gravely and earnestly. 
“Rarely happy, Mr. Cope.” 

“You count me rarely happy? ” he repeated. 

“Yes; I do. Your way is so clear before you, — 
the thing you ought to do; and you are so strong to 
do it, always. And then — it may seem a strange 
thing to say, or I may say it strangely — but to have 
come to the end — the earthly end — even of a tie, an 
affection, safely ; without great shipwreck or mistake ; 
even in losing, it seems to me that is a joy. We do 
stumble so; every close relation is such a responsibil- 
ity ; such a possibility of fearful negligence or wrong ; 
we may hurt hearts so, and hinder souls! It frightens 
me to live, sometimes.” 

“Do you think I feel that I have done all well? 
That I have made no mistake or failure? Do you 
suppose it has always been clear before me ? Do you 
suppose that memory is clean and unaccusing, now ? ” 

“I think you have been true and strong; that is all 
men and women can be. I think she is safe, and that 
you can look back in peace, and forward in gladness. 


506 


HITHERTO, 


It seems to me that that is all this world can help us 
to. The ^now ’ is always mixed and clouded.” 

“Not if we take it simply as the ‘now;’ not if we 
do not ourselves mix it. We mix it with our ‘have 
beens, ’ or our ‘might have beens, ’ or our ‘by and by.’ 
God means it simply for now; the ‘manna of to-day.’ ” 

“I cannot separate it; that is where you are so 
strong. I cannot tell what ‘now’ is, when all that 
has come to it, and all that may come of it, is taken 
out. I cannot even take it always as the ‘now ’ that 
I was truly meant to come to. How do I know? I 
have made it, greatly, for myself; for others, too; 
and I may have made it very badly. The worst ‘might 
have beens ’ are those that we ourselves have thrust 
aside, or changed, or passed unheeded.” 

“God knows a thousand ‘might have beens ’ where 
we know one ; He can look at them all patiently, be- 
cause — this is the blessedness — He knows a thousand 
‘may bes ’ also! Did you ever think what his thought 
of us must be ? ” 

“Sometimes I do not see how He can bear to think 
of us at all.” 

“Yet every one of us is a thought of his, or else we 
should not be. See here! I wonder if I can tell you; 
I wonder if I can tell myself, in words, what it has 
seemed like when it has come closest. Did you go 
and look at those blind ferns ? ” 

“Yes.” 

I wondered that he had recollected. 

“I think of those because they are such wrapped-up 
thoughts; that is, because we can see the wrapping so, 
and we can watch the unfolding. But consider how 
far back the thought begins ; with the little seed — 
one among a million — under the tender frond ; how it 
waits in that, how it falls with it, — for not one of 
these, even, can fall without your Father. How, all 


UNDERTOW, 


507 


through the pregnant, quickened earth, beside every 
particle of its dust, nearly, lies something that has 
life, and that, therefore, God’s thought must lie close 
alongside of and within. Think that whenever a little 
blade or leaf comes up, it comes up in tender evidence, 
because it simply could not have been there without 
Him. Think how his word, so, makes all the world, 
and has gone out to the ends of the earth. Can you 
see ? Can you believe ? ” 

“I don’t know,” I answered. “I only know it is 
warm and beautiful. I don’t know how much I do 
believe — with my heart.” 

He looked in my eyes earnestly. I think he knew 
what I meant. I think he saw the glow that came 
from somewhere, meeting the truth. 

He went on. 

“Think of our human selves. If God so clothe the 
grass, doth He not much more clothe us? With what 
does that mean ? Gowns, coats ? They stop very short 
who stop there, in the reading. That which grows out 
of us; whatever we come to; the shaping, and the 
placing, and the history; that is the raiment he puts 
upon us, to see us by, and to make us see each other. 
And yet — the life is more — the body is more — than 
the raiment. There is more within and beyond than 
has ever come forth. More, and better worth. Close 
to us, close to what there is of any one of us already, 
is this thought of God, which is his presence, his 
touch; yet far back, touching also all in the whole 
world that has had to do with this life, this conscious- 
ness — with its being here to-day, and with what from 
afar off and away back has worked toward it, and 
tended to make it just where and as it is, reaches his 
consciousness for it, which outruns its own; and away 
on, to what may be, through all possible conditions, 
forever. To say that God is with me, that He knows 


508 


HITHERTO. 


all of me, is to make Him infinite just for me. And 
so He is. So He is for every one. Each soul is held 
in the very heart of his almightiness, as if there were 
a separate almightiness for each. If there had only 
been one soul, there must have been a God to take 
care of it.” 

I felt tears go down my cheeks. I could not say 
a word. It was rich and beautiful; warm with the 
conception of God’s love and nearness. I glowed 
while I heard it ; but — did I feel God so ? 

I had come to this close analysis; I had come to 
know that I might stand and look at the glory; that I 
might catch, with joy, a reflected ray ; that my heart 
might burn in me, to walk ever so little way beside a 
life that held itself so beside the Highest; yet that 
straight down into my own consciousness the life and 
the glory might never have come. 

I could think of the great, warm earth, turning in 
the sun-flood; I could think of little hidden herbs and 
grasses, and glorious wilderness flowers, each touched 
with that living thought that was a meaning and a 
creation; I could think of little birds in the forest 
depths, with a Presence about them more brooding 
than the mother-wing. I could conceive, gladly, that 
wherever a life was, there was the instant Giver. I 
could so put God into the world, or the world into 
Him, — as if I were a thought outside the world and 
Him. I could think of souls of men held deep in his 
infinity ; I could think of myself there, — and yet not 
be there. In the very present life beating in me, 
could I feel his heart-beat? Could I say, “Now Thou 
quickenest me; now Thou art with me, and I with 
Thee ; the glory of thy Face is upon me ” ? 

“I can hear all his word,” I said to Grandon Cope. 
“I know it when I hear it; hut I think it is spoken 
above me, among the angels. It does not call me by 


UNDEBTOW. 


509 


my name ; I believe that my life is in Him, as you say ; 
but it is as one in a reverie, thinking of the place He 
stands in, forgetting that He is bodily there. The 
very thinking puts me outside. If I could wake out 
of the dream, — if I could leave off thinking and just 
say. Here am I ! and find Him round me. How can 
I find Him ? How can I come close, and know ? ” 

“At the feet of his Christ.” 

The man of thought, of power, of insight, said this. 
The man of science had but this simple answer for me. 

“Christ, also, is in the unseen heaven.” 

VHe walked the earth. His life is in it. The 
Past is Now. He answers you and me in every word 
he spoke to those Hebrew men and women. We have 
the commandment and the gift. He is the same yes- 
terday, to-day, and forever; and He opens the king- 
dom of heaven to all believers. But we must begin 
at the beginning; we must come in at the door; we 
must not climb up some other way. And the begin- 
ning is — Do the will. Then my Father will come, 
and I will come. Do not trouble 2i)aoMi finding . You 
shall he found."* 

I asked him no more questions. 

He sat a little while silently, and then got up to 
go. I rose to say good-by. 

• It was to be good-by. He would hardly come 
again. He was to go to New York next week. 

He took from his pocket a little parcel, tied in 
white paper with a silken string. 

“This is for you,” he said. “It was Augusta’s; 
and I desire for you, as I did for her, that the sign 
of it may be fulfilled in you. I leave it for you to 
read, for I know you have the alphabet. And now, 
good-by.” 

He did not ask me if I would accept the gift. He 
did not put it as a gift from himself. It was some- 


510 


HITHERTO. 


thing that had been Augusta’s. He just laid it down 
upon the table, and turned and took my hand. He 
held it firmly, warmly, with the long grasj) of a 
friend ; then suddenly he let it go. 

Between us were a few stejDS, — the length of the 
room, — then he was gone out of the house. 

The distance had be^un; the distance that was to 
be measured between us over land and sea. The min- 
utes had begun that were to be counted between these 
last words and any we might ever speak again. The 
minutes that were to roll themselves into hours and 
days and weeks and months and years, and fill them- 
selves with life, — working, separating, changing, — 
between us two. 

My friend ! My friend ! 

He walked down the drive-way. I saw him stand- 
ing by the garden-fence with Richard. I saw the two 
men take each other by the hand, and hold each other 
so, by the length of their straightening arms, as they 
moved and parted. I saw each lift his hat as he 
turned away. 

There was thorough, warm respect between those 
two. 

A strange thrill of pride in them both — my hus- 
band and my friend — came up in me as I looked. 
Then I took the little white parcel from the table and 
went away, hastily, into my room with it. 

I shut myself in, and sat down, and untied the 
string. 

I held upon my lap a narrow, oblong, blue velvet 
case. I touched the spring and let the lid fall back. 
Inside, upon pure white satin, lay the exquisite brace- 
let — the most beautiful one I had seen Augusta wear 
— of flexile, delicately linked Etruscan gold ; its 
chains fastened with “ a knop and a flower, a knop and 
a flower, ” in tiniest, most shadowy fine fretwork ; its 


XJNBERTOW. 


511 


clasp a single turquoise of great size, of fairest, un- 
flawed, tender blue. The gem was as large as half 
my thumb; convex-oval; shaped like a shell lying 
back uppermost, with a ridge along its middle. It 
was like a little, beautiful, heaped-up wave. Only its 
color was like the sky. 

I knew about it. August^, was proud of its great 
value. Grandon had bought it of an Alexandrian 
Jew, at the great fair at Leipsic. There was hardly 
another like it in the world. 

“I knew the alphabet. He desired its sign to be 
fulfilled in me.” 

The perfect gold ; deep, rich-colored, unalloyed. 

Ah, but this gold was fretted ; tortured with work- 
manship. Its delicate links, — its knops and its flow- 
ers, subtilely twisted, — how had they been drawn, 
and bent, and wrested, and pained ! 

Was that why the gold of the altar must be made 
holy with “beaten and cunning work ” ? The metal 
that could purely endure, — was that the type of soul- 
substance God loved to deal with, — out of which He 
shapes his cherubim? 

Only the purest could be made thus beautiful. 
That is the value and the proof. 

Held, and clasped, and finished with the stainless 
blue. 

I did not so much as touch it with one of my fin- 
gers. I shut down the lid, and laid it away from me. 

Augusta had worn it complacently. Could not peo- 
ple read the meanings of these things they bind upon 
themselves and placidly appropriate ? The fine-twined 
linen, and the blue, and the purple, and the beaten 
gold ? How do we dare ? 

I do not know how my thoughts ran on then, or 
whether they stood still. 

All at once, — it was a good while first, — some- 


512 


HITHERTO. 


thing said in me, or I said in myself (in these silences, 
how do we know who speaks?), — 

“He will go out there. He will go out and marry 
Hope ! ” 

I felt the words. I heard them plainly in myself. 
I could not turn away from that, nor from the pain- 
shot that went through me as they came. I knew that 
I was out beyond the breakers. I knew the undertow 
had all but got me, then. 

I started up upon my feet. I stood still, as it 
were, with all my might. 

“ What if he does ! ” I cried out aloud, defying 
myself. 

I lifted my foot, and struck it down upon the floor, 
as if I trampled something underneath. 

“ I will not he this thing ! 

“Shall I forfeit my soul for a shred, a shadow of a 
mere garment that my life might have put on, — but 
that it never did, and never may ? Shall I grieve and 
spoil a better soul than mine? Where shall I get 
help to take this out of me before it grows ? ” 

“At the feet of his Christ.” 

I heard that, too. 

I went down, then, upon my knees. In the middle 
of the floor, where I had been standing. 

I felt as if I were in the wide pavement of the tem- 
ple. I felt as if He sat before me. I felt as if one, 
but a little worse than I, had gone away, leaving the 
place empty for me to come. It seemed as if the pity 
had not yet gone out of his eyes. 

“Christ, I come to Thee for cleansing! Save this 
life of me, that is more than raiment! ” 


CHAPTER XLI. 

SAVED; YET 


They were out on Red Hill. 

It was a Sunday afternoon in September. 

The air was at once crisp and sweet. Summer sent 
her slant light along the earth, most beautiful as she 
slid away, down to the waiting zones helow; as the 
waning afternoon gives back a level glory more inti- 
mate than the noontide splendor. 

They had been to church in the morning. After 
dinner, Richard had slept. Anstiss found him, as she 
sometimes did in these days, lying on the cool, broad 
sofa in the open hall. “Resting a minute,” he would 
say when she asked him. But Richard Hathaway had 
not been used to rest. 

She went and made some cool lemonade to give him 
when he should awake. 

“It did him good. It brightened him; that, and 
his nap,” she said to herself, as she took away the 
glass when he had drunk it. 

It was her thought of him that brightened him. 
She had thought so much of him, in every little way, 
lately. She had always been kind and dutiful; but 
these last weeks it had been more as he was used to 
think for her. 

“It is almost as if her very, whole heart was in it,” 
he said to himself. “It is almost as if I were enough 
for her.” 

Anstiss Hathaway had her husband to win over 
again. Not his love; that never changed. But she 
had to persuade him — silently, by living, not by 


514 


HITHERTO. 


words — that her love, wholly and truly, might yet be 
his; that these years of their married life had been 
but a part of their history, — the history of their 
heart-growing toward each other; but their beautiful, 
perfect moment was yet to come. 

There are many marriages that are like this; many 
in which the story ends darkly, just because they do 
not see that it is only telling, not all told. 

“Shall we go to walk, Nansie? ” 

“ Do you feel like it ? ” 

She was afraid he would do it just for her. 

“Yes. . Just like it. I should like to go over to 
Red Hill.” 

“That is a ride.*” 

“And a walk after the ride. Wouldn’t you like 
it? It is pleasant weather for Red Hill.” 

“If you think you are quite able.” 

“Of course I am able. What a funny ‘if ’ that is, 
Nansie! ” 

Some people are “ of course ” always able, as others 
are, equally of course, always unable. It seems to be 
so set down for them and accepted ; and it takes a long 
time for themselves or for others to change the atti- 
tude or the impression, — of ability, especially. It 
would take a long time for Richard Hathaway to come 
to considering his steps. 

So they were out on Red Hill. 

Anstiss had a basket full of mosses and lichens, 
gathered as they came up. She had been straying 
about here, upon the broad hilltop, picking up more. 

She came and sat down by Richard. 

It was on the selfsame flat shelf of gray stone, with 
the rest below for their feet, looking tow^ard the great, 
open west filling with glory, where they had sat ten 
years before; when she had told him “never to mind; 
they would just have a good time.” 


SAVED; YET 


515 


Was that what she had come to, with the hard, 
restless life - question ? With her little basket of 
mosses, red, gray, pearly, and green, and that pleased 
face? Was she just making the best of it, at last? 

“She looks almost like a happy woman. She is 
trying to be. Poor Nansie ! It is like when she was 
a little girl, with her little, pale, thin face, and her 
short, stiff hair, that Mjss Chism would keep cut, — 
tying on wreaths of shavings down in the shop, and 
wearing them for curls. She is trying to make it do. 
Brave little Nansie ! What a woman she would have 
been if it had done ! 

“She has tried before. I ’ve seen it. And it ’s 
been no use. It ’ll be no use again, perhaps. I don’t 
count it for myself, any of it, — only the goodness. I 
thank her for that in my very heart. I shall tell her 
so, when I get where I can tell things. If I went 
first, perhaps I could say it to her, in still times, when 
she is happy, and out of her happiness sends back some 
pitiful, tender thought to me. Perhaps I could do for 
her then. Perhaps I could make things come, some 
of them, as they ought to come for her. Maybe that ’s 
what I ’m put alongside of her now for; to love her, 
and to find out. 

“I think I shall go first. I think I ought to. I 
think that ’s the way it ’s meant, most likely. It ’s 
all planned out better than I could plan it. And then 
it ’ll be forgiven me, maybe, that I tied her to me so, 
here, for a while.” 

Anstiss was laying out the mosses on her lap; put- 
ting the deep, rich-colored ones, with cups and spires, 
alongside the delicate, misty, pale-green pieces, and 
against these again, the full, velvety, emerald mosses 
proper that she had found in the low woods. Among 
them, and overlapping them also, she heaped, as she 
came to them, the silvery flaked lichens, such as the 


516 


HITHERTO. 


humming-bird thatches her nest with, and all the varied 
browns that one hardly believes are, until one searches 
for them, and finds how curiously and untiringly the 
beauty and the manifoldness are put even into these 
simplest growths, — these mere gatherings of time and 
of decay. 

It was a pleased face, still with content, that she 
bent over these. Not such a face as had searched the 
far clouds for their colors and their meanings, that 
night ten years ago ; yet it looked afar also, into depths 
of tender minuteness, as it held itself above these 
things from underfoot that were tinted with the same 
touches that wrote the word in lines of fire across the 
heavens. 

Near things. 

That was what she was thinking, saying to herself. 
Little, and near, and everyday things. The meaning 
is in these also. And the gift and the joy as well. 

Near doing, and near living, and near loving, — 
these life-particles make the great heaven, as the little, 
polarized atoms of light, all magnetized one way, make 
the great blue in which the stars burn forever. Each 
point is intense and perfect azure, even if it were alone. 
Each soul, purely poised, is a heaven ; and they all are 
“the body of heaven in his clearness,” wherein the 
throne of God is like unto a sapphire, “above the 
firmament that is over their heads.” 

She was willing, at last, to be a soul-particle ; to be 
glad with all souls in the joy of the Lord. 

She drew closer to Richard’s side. She took up 
little bashful, loving ways with him, as if, true-point- 
ing now herself, she felt, like the needle of a crystal, 
the true-pointing that was in him, and that set them 
closer, side by side. 

These ways of hers were like a beautiful torment to 
him. 


SAVED; YET 


517 

“If it could only really be! ” he thought. “If she 
did not have to try! ” 

He looked down at her, putting his arm about her, 
letting her rest so. 

There came a bright little gleam of a smile, climb- 
ing suddenly up into her face. It seemed happy, and 
it seemed amused. 

“What is it, Nansie? ” he asked, as he looked down 
and met it. 

“ Zaccheus, he 
Did climb a tree,” 

she answered, out of the Primer. 

“And, you see, he need not have done it. That is 
what it means, I think, instead of altogether to praise 
his zeal. He thought he must climb high, to see the 
Lord. But the first thing Jesus says to him, when 
He sees him there, is to call him down. ‘I will abide 
in thine house, ’ He tells him. I ’ve just noticed it, 
as Hope says.” 

“You are growing like Hope, somehow,” said Rich- 
ard. 

“Am I, Richard? Then I am growing fitter to be 
your wife.” 

Fitter to be his wife! Why, that was the other 
way ! Could she be thinking like that ? She looked 
so glad, too, when he said it. He could see, as it 
were, a quick pulse of joy in her eyes. The blue of 
them grew deep, as if color surged up into them. 

“Do you know, Richard, I have thought a good 
many times, that Hope ought to have been your wife ? 
And I think, — not that she let herself think of it, 
or be sorry; that is not Hope’s way, — but I think 
she might have been, naturally, if you had asked her 
instead of me.” 

“I did ask her, Nansie.” 


518 


HITHERTO. 


He told his wife this, after those nine years. He 
said it almost before he thought. 

“Richard!” 

“She was too true to me to take me. I asked her 
when I had no hope of you. And yet — 

“I should have gone on loving you all my life.” 

That was what was behind the “yet; ” but she did 
not know it. He stopped there. Why, this was 
strangely like love - making again, — and they, old 
married people ! How came their talk to run of this 
fashion? He stopped himself at that “yet” like a 
lover who did not know how it should be taken. 

She wondered, troublously, what had been behind it. 
She was as shy to ask as she would have been nine 
years ago. She was slowly loving, and slowly win- 
ning, him again, as if she had been a girl. Slowly 
finding out, that is, that she could “love much;” 
hoping also to he forgiven much ; slowly beguiling him 
to believe. 

Is it a strange story? 

How pretty Anstiss was to-day ! Prettier at twenty- 
nine than ever. Something like the changefulness of 
girlhood, trembling and flushing with half - formed 
thoughts, showed itself in her glance, her color. 

Some sort of peace, some touch of wonderful rest, 
also, had come over the unrestful, feverish nature, 
these last two months. Richard did not know. Only 
she herself, and He to whom she came, in her struggle, 
her pain, her sin, — knew how it had been. He had 
put forth his hand and lifted her up, and the fever 
had left her, and she rose to do sweet ministering; to 
earn her life again. 

If only Richard would keep well! If she could 
only have time ! 

Was it but two months? She seemed to have lived 
so long since that day when Grandon Cope came there 


SAVED; YET 


519 


and bade her good-by, and left her with the storm in 
her heart. So much had slid back, and seemed long 
past already ; because she had so utterly let it go. So 
much had hushed itself within her, and so much was 
wakening, as into a sweet, new morning. 

“I will take this life that Thou hast given me, and 
I will live it out with my hand in thine. I will thank 
Thee for it every day. I will trust Thee for what it 
shall come to, with both of us, — souls just begun, as 
we are. I will love that in him that Thou art making; 
I will trust Thee, gladly, for what Thou art making 
in me. Speak thy word unto me daily, and keep me 
clean! ” 

It was with a prayer like this God saved her. 

But sometimes a terrible dread came over her, — a 
foreshadowing thrill. Might she be saved “so as by 
fire ” ? 

Might Richard go hence, into the glory; be clothed, 
suddenly, with his great, waiting angelhood, and leave 
all this little life of his, with its love and its pain, 
behind him ? Leave her, in her unworthiness, — her 
sin unatoned? Would God deal thus with her? 

She could not bear that. She could not look at 
that thought long. 

“Forgive as we forgive each other,” she cried; and 
the plea was a promise. “Undo and abate all that 
can be undone and abated, as we would when we truly 
forgive. ” 

And so she hoped again. 

In the silence between these two the depths of their 
life was flowing. 

They got up to go down the hill again. 

All down in the meadows was the golden, rolling 
mist of the sunset. The tops of the trees moved in 
it, and the clouds waited, above, till the level glory 
should slide down over the horizon, and its shafts slant 


520 


HITHERTO. 


upward to make them splendid after the earth was 
dark. 

They did not talk much on the way. Anstiss was 
learning to feel her husband’s soul in the stillness. 
She was not restless for words, as she had been. But 
Richard — he thought she was learning to do without. 

They had got almost to the foot of the hill, to 
where the horse waited, when Richard suddenly 
stopped, leaning up against a tree. His face turned 
pale, so that it shone out in the gathering dusk. 

Anstiss sprang to his side. 

He could not speak, at first ; he only smiled, as she 
looked up at him in a terror. 

“It is only a dizziness,” he said then, the color 
coming back partly, and he moving to go on. “I 
have it sometimes. And my head has ached to-day. 
It was better up there on the hill.” 

“Richard! Richard! don’t let it ache! Don’t he 
dizzy, — don’t be sick! You were always well — till 
I worried you ! ” 

And Anstiss put her arms up over his shoulders, 
and burst out crying. 

“Why, little Nansie! Do you care like that? ” 

He grew strong, then, all of a sudden, as he had 
grown faint. 

He put her into the chaise, and got in beside her. 

“We ’ll go home and get some tea. We shall both 
be all right, then.” 

But Richard was not all right in the morning. 
For the first time in his life he could not get up and 
dress. His head was heavy with pain, and his eyes 
were feverish and bloodshotten. His limbs all ached. 
There was a strange dreaminess in his brain. Things 
did not seem real to him. 

Did they seem real to his wife? 

Real as the day of judgment. 


SAVED; YET 


521 


“It’s nothin’ more than I expected,” said Martha 
Geddis. “It ’s ben a draggin’ on him all summer 
long. Now, he ’s got to wrastle it out. And it ’s 
which ’ll beat, fever or man. You an’ I has got our 
hands full, Mis’ Hathaway.” 


CHAPTER XLII. 


so AS BY FIRE. 

“Be not deceived. God is not mocked. Whatso- 
ever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” 

God might forgive, hut I must suffer it out. 

Those awful, inexorable words stood by me like 
angels of doom. 

Sometimes he knew me; sometimes he smiled. 
Sometimes his gaze was all wide and wild. Fever had 
him. He was not my Richard any more. He was a 
soul in the deep, lone struggle with death. I could 
only stand by. 

I could not say my heart to him; not any of it, 
ever again. I could only give drink to his^ lips, and 
smooth the pillows for his dear head, and sit like a 
still, cursed thing, through the midnights, bearing my 
sentence. 

“He found no place for repentance, though he sought 
it carefully, with tears.” Was that true? Did God 
punish so? 

Where was the Christ who had forgiven me? I 
could not find Him, then, in the darkness. I was all 
alone; and there was my husband, going out of the 
world; passed, already, beyond my touch. 

We kept him in a perfect hush. 

If he were dead, I could have cried to him. I 
could have prayed God to give him my messages. But 
I could say no word to him now, lest he should die; 
lest that should determine what I believed was deter- 
mined already. 

If he were gone, he would come back to me, per- 


so AS BY FIRE. 


523 


haps; to his poor little, suffering, contrite wife. I 
did not think he could stay away, even in heaven. 
But he was so far away, now ! Tossing on that great 
deep of pain ; withdrawn from this life, not taken into 
the life eternal. I almost longed for the days and 
nights to be over ; for what should come, to come. 

I could not say one word to God. Was that be- 
cause my whole soul was one awful agony of prayer? 
It just lay bare and wretched before Him. What 
would He do with it ? Would He ever send one word 
of peace into it again? Was I already in the outer 
darkness ? 

His sister came, and his brother. They wanted to 
help me. Everybody wanted to help me. They tried 
to make me go to bed, and sleep. They said I was 
doing too much; that I should not hold out. I knew 
I should have to hold out ; that souls did hold out, to 
bear all their punishment. 

I heard John Hathaway tell the doctor, “His wife 
is giving up her life for him.” 

They thought I was a good, self-sacrificing wife. 
Why, I knew that I had killed him ! 

I almost laughed when I heard such things. If I 
had laughed, I should have gone mad. I knew how 
near I came to it. But God kept my senses, too ; all 
my power to see and suffer it through. 

Tiien, after days and nights, it began to grow dead 
and old. I knew I had got something awful laid 
away, to look at and to bear, by and by. But I had 
borne all I could, just now. I went on with a kind of 
mechanical persistence. I made gruels, and beef- tea; 
I measured cordials; I dropped medicines; I sat and 
watched at night, except when they put me down on 
the sofa in his room, and made me lie there for an 
hour. 

I kept it all in my heart, — all I had to say to him, 


524 


HITHERTO. 


and that he would go away and never hear ; I should 
have it to keep for years and years and years, perhaps, 
till God would let me die and come and say it there. 
I thought He would let me say it there, just once; 
let me speak to him one moment, even if He sent me 
right away again, forever. I thought impiously and 
fiercely, that I would say it. And then I remembered 
how easily I was being hindered here. Yes; I was in 
the mighty hand of the Living God. I could writhe 
and cry ; but I could only have what He would give 
me. 

There came a night, at last, when he lay, — oh, so 
still! No feverish tossing, no wild talk, only dead 
prostration. The fever had gone; but the life was 
gone with it ; wasted and burnt away. I saw the mo- 
ment when the doctor gave him up. I saw it, exult- 
ing. Now he was mine again for the little that was 
left. 

And his eyes knew me. I saw that. 

I would have him all to myself this last night. I 
would say it to him when he should be dying. He 
should go straight to God with my repentance and my 
prayer. 

I told them that I would have it so. I would watch 
alone with Richard to-night. 

They argued against it; they began to. I hushed 
them with one word. * 

“I shall die if you do not let me.” 

I said it very quietly, — faintly. For the life was 
almost going out of me. I had no strength for dis- 
pute ; only for doing this one thing. 

“ I believe she says the truth, ” said the doctor ; and 
then they gave up. 

I spoke with the doctor before he went away : — 

“Tell me one thing. Will anything make any dif- 
ference ? Can I say something to him, if he can hear ?” 


so AS BY FIBE. 


525 

“Anything you please, Mrs. Hathaway. I do not 
think it can hurt him now. ” 

No. I had hurt him all I could. Nothing could 
hurt him now. 

Nobody said it to me; it came; brought to my re- 
membrance. The Spirit of God said it. One after 
another, things joined themselves together and came 
into my mind. 

I had wanted a prophet; a soul to love me that 
could see great things ; a soul that stood nearer to the 
Great Wisdom than I. 

“Verily, I say unto you, Among them that are born 
of women there hath not arisen a greater prophet than 
John the Baptist ; yet he who is least in the kingdom 
of heaven is greater than he.” 

“The kingdom of God is not meat and drink; 
but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy 
Ghost.” 

“He who shall keep the least of these my command- 
ments, and teach men so.” 

“Let them see your good works, and glorify your 
Father. ” 

“And these are the works of the flesh: adultery; 
uncleanness; idolatry; witchcraft.” 

False love; false worship; false spirituality. 

“But the works of the Spirit are these: love, joy, 
peace, long-suffering, gentleness, meekness.” 

Where had the Spirit been, between us two ? 

I set my life and soul alongside his, — my patient, 
great-hearted husband’s. God let down his light upon 
them. Which shone forth as the sun? Which stood 
nearest ? 

I had repented before of that which the devil 
brought me near to being; I repented now, seeing in 
awful clearness that which I had not been. 


626 


HITHERTO. 


I watched, in silence; all this went through my 
soul while I kept count of the time, while I was in- 
stant to the second with each restorative, the teaspoon- 
fuls that kept life in him. Between times, I slid to 
my knees before tlie great white easy-chair beside his 
bed, and let God look at me; to see if there were 
anything amidst this evil in me that He could pity 
and save. 

I would not break his quietness; his possible rest; 
not even for that only thing that could save me from 
despair, — his word of forgiveness. But I prayed 
that he might speak to me, some time in the long 
hours of this night; that I might be able to say that 
to him which I thought I should die a soul- death if I 
did not say. 

The first hours after midnight had been his most 
unquiet ones, hitherto; he had talked and wandered 
most, then. I watched for these to see how it would 
be to-night. 

The old clock below in the hall gave its three-min- 
ute warning. I heard it through the heavy stillness. 
I waited, as if for an axe to fall. 

The single stroke came, — more solemn than the 
stroke of midnight. The hours had begun again. 

Richard turned his head. His face was toward me, 
now. Only the thin drapery of the bed between us, 
as I sat there in the great chair. I bent down close. 
I could hear him breathe. 

I knew he was awake. Oh, if he had waked 
calmly! If he could hear! If he could only be with 
me, one moment, before he went away ! 

I heard him say my name; low, feebly, in a whis- 
per ; like a thought of me ; not a call. 

“Nansie. Nansie.” 

And then I heard him whispering to God. 

“Father Almighty, make up to her what I have 


so AS BY FIRE. 


527 


made her lose! And make me, in thy heaven, more 
fit to love her, and be with her, when she comes 1 ” 

Then I cried up to Him, aloud. 

I fell down there beside Richard, my husband, 
whom the heaven must not shut .in from me. I 
stretched my arms out over him to keep him. I felt 
after the Power that raiseth whom it will. I clutched 
for the hem of the garment. I believed, mightily, in 
the Christ who came to just such awful needs. 

“ O God I If ever a life was raised up in the name 
of Jesus, give me back my husband now. For I do 
love him so, and I do so repent! Leave me not to 
live without him, yet ! ” 

His hand — Richard’s — came over gently, till it 
found my head. 

“Nansie, — dear little Nansie! ” 

We had prayed ourselves heart to heart. Before 
God, in that terrible hour, we had found each other. 

I think he had thought that he must die for me. 

But his love was so great, so strong, that it had 
power even to live for me. He turned in that mo- 
ment, and came back from death. The life in him 
heard that cry of mine, like Lazarus in the tomb ; and, 
bound as it were with the very grave-clothes, it came 
forth. 

I held him as if my life and will could kindle his. 
I knelt there, with my arms over him, his hand upon 
my head, until the clock struck two. Every little 
while came that loving whisper, like the reaches of a 
returning tide. 

“ My dear little Nansie ! ” 

He called me his again. 

Then that double stroke warned me. I softly 
loosed myself from him and arose. I went and 
brought the cup from which I fed him. More than 


528 


HITHERTO. 


the hour had gone by, since I had done it last. But 
I could not have moved before. Not while his hand 
lay so restfully upon my head, and his lips kept 
breathing “Little Nansie!” If there were good in 
any giving, he was receiving from me then. 

I gave him the one spoonful, now. 

“More,” he said softly. 

Joy sobbed up in my throat, as I gave him two 
and three. His will was with my prayer. He was 
resolving to get well. God’s will be with us both! 

When the daylight came in, he was asleep, his 
hands held fast in mine. 

Some one crept softly to the door, and looked in 
upon us. It was Mary. 

I shook my head gently, without turning, and she 
went away. 

He slept until the sunshine was broad upon the 
entry floor, shining in at the little crack of the just 
open door. 

I kissed him when he woke, and gave him warm 
beef- tea that Mary brought me. 

Fifteen minutes after, I met the doctor at the stair- 
head. 

“He is alive. He has spoken. He has eaten. He 
has slept.” 

And then I fell upon the good old man’s neck, and 
sobbed and shook with all that night’s resisted passion. 

Richard got well. Because he could not go and leave 
me so. It was truly the love that is stronger than 
death. The love that can come hack. The very 
power by which the Lord took up his life again, and 
returned unto his own. 

But one day when he could talk more, Richard said 
this to me; half as if he ought not to have been per- 
suaded : — 


so AS BY FIUE. 


529 


“I cannot ever — I never have — given you the 
best, Nansie. Some one else might have. I took 
you covetously, I am afraid. You belong higher. I 
know that. I knew it when I came so near, — when 
I saw clearer what the best was.” 

“I saw clearer, too, Richard. I saw the best; and 
I saw it in you. But the real, whole best is in God. 
We both belong higher. It is by the life we touch in 
Him, that we find each other. That is the counterpart 
and the complement. There is one great, perfect 
marriage; and the bride is the New Jerusalem. We 
are only little pieces, Richard. But we are little 
pieces that belong side by side.” 


CHAPTER XLIII. 


INDIAN SUMMER. 

The Indian Summer came in November; the ripe, 
warm days when all the air was like rich, fragrant 
wine; when the smoke of the great earth’s thankful 
incense went up in the sunlight ; when after the hymn 
and the prayer of the joy and toil come down the per- 
fect benediction and the peace. 

I went out every day with Richard. I drove him 
long drives, out over the beautiful country, among the 
sunny hills. I walked with him up the open orchard, 
and along the slopes of the sweet, resting fields. 

One day — a day I had watched and waited for 
— we went up the river ; floating in the soft haze be- 
tween sky and stream, in sun and shadow, up into the 
dream-land, that was more a beautiful dream than 
ever. 

Richard was strong enough to row down. We took 
a boy to row us up, and then be sent back across the 
fields. I wanted to be alone with my husband again 
in the beauty he had brought me to that first day so 
long ago. I had a word that I must say to him there. 

The river was set with gems. The deep, dark 
water was like agate, laid between heaped and clus- 
tered stones. Amber and topaz and carbuncle and 
ruby ; fiery gold gleaming here and there ; the dropped 
leaves lay upon the banks, and floated, piled upon each 
other, in the still curves. It had been a sweet, linger- 
ing autumn. The fierce winds had not come yet ; nor 
the long, sad rains. 

Up over the low-spread splendor opened the wide. 


INDIAN SUMMER. 


531 


soft sky. Through the thinning branches of the trees 
came down the last, most tender kisses of the sun. 
But the deep banks held us in the ofd, beautiful seclu- 
sion. The warmth came down for us, and the still 
gorge gathered it in, and held it, a river above a river, 
a tide of glory filling it up to the brim. We seemed 
to breathe the sunlight. The life we drew into us 
was golden. It was the mystic elixir men had tried 
to make, resolving it back from its most concrete form. 

Richard drank great breaths of it. He took off his 
hat, and let the sunshine lie among his hair. He 
looked grand and beautiful to me with his bared head, 
blessing coming down upon it. He bared his soul, in 
like wise, quietly; and I knew now how God’s light 
found it. The joy was there ; we were both in it ; it 
was enough. 

When we sent the boy away, and lay there under 
the shelving rock, where some late-surviving creeper 
flung its embrace of flame over the cedar branches and 
along the moss-warm stone, it seemed almost as if I 
waked there out of a long, dim dream that had lain 
between that first day of our marriage and this that 
we were keeping now. As if a great Mercy had rolled 
back the years, having shown me what they might have 
been, and set me again at their fair beginning. 

How do we know how much of these lives we live is 
just a showing, like that ? It feels so to us, often. 

I had a word to say to Richard. 

“ We must he married, ” I had said to him that day. 
I said that to the man I had stood up with twenty- 
four hours before, solemnly taking him for my wedded 
husband ; with whom I had gone to his home to live 
with him. And he had said to me, simply and nobly, 
— what I must now say to him. There had been all 
these years between the two sentences of our marriage 
service. 


532 


HITHERTO. 


“Some great thing is in your face, Anstiss, ” said 
Richard. 

I knew there was. I felt it crowding to my cheeks 
and eyes. 

“Will you believe it, if I say it? ” 

“I believe you, always.” 

“ What do you believe me ? What am I to you, 
Richard? Tell me truly.” 

“My dear and faithful wife.” 

“Is that all? But ‘faithful ’ is a great word, too. 
Does it hold all it ought to, when you say it so? 
What is faithful, Richard ? ” 

“It is good, and kind; and — yes, I do believe — 
content.” 

He put his hand upon my cheek, lovingly, as he 
might upon a child’s; stroking it down, and looking 
into my eyes. 

Content ! That was all I had made him believe yet ! 

“ Do you know what you said to me here, nine 
years ago ? ” 

“Troublesome things, didn’t I?” he asked me, 
smiling. 

He would not come back. He would not think 
that moment could be for him again, with more in it ; 
with no defrauding. 

“You said ” — I turned my face to him with eyes 
bent down and glowing cheeks, glowing with the word 
of the strong man’s love that I remembered — “that 
you were ‘married to me, through and through, every 
thought and fibre of you. ’ Then we were half mar- 
ried. Richard, I want — to say my half to-day. 
There was not enough of me, then, to say, or to know 
it. I think there is beginning to be more, now. And 
I can say it. All there is of me does, just so, belong 
to you. There is not a thought, or a wish, that could 
go anywhere else. Do you believe me, now ? ” 


INDIAN SUMMER. 533 

How could he help believing me ? When I had been 
nine years in making sure ? 

Before I had finished, he had his arms about me. 
And when he held me back again, and looked in my 
face, there were great, honest, happy tears standing 
in his eyes. 

I did not think I had half said it, after all. Half 
answered this large, perfect patience; this generous 
love that had been always there, waiting, like the 
Lord’s. 

I had not. I should always be nine years behind 
him. I had it all to live, — to prove; the chords, 
between which lie the harmonies, are struck in mar- 
riage hours ; the full, beautiful theme is played out in 
the years. 

Who thinks the story is all told at twenty? Let 
them live on, and try. 

I was half through my thirtieth year, and Richard 
was eight years more, and we had just come to this. 

The Indian Summer had just touched our lives. 

For God gives grace. There is no good thing — 
not even the right and lawful love — that He will 
withhold, if we do ask Him with a true and sole de- 
sire; not having a secret mind to any other. He may 
give it through fire and tears as He gave me; yes, 
even the fire and the flood may not be stayed. But 
we must dare ask, even for that. Dare to say, 
“Through whatsoever way Thou wilt; only up; up 
into perfect purity and truth ! ” 


CHAPTER XLIV. 


FROM OVER THE SEA. 

It was one day that winter that Richard came home 
from New Oxford, bringing me news. 

Richard brought news, as he did other things; in 
little parcels, put away in different pockets; to be 
brought out one bit at a time. 

The first news was sorrowful ; yet only what we had 
for some time expected. Mrs. Cope had died at 
Florence. 

“Now, Mr. Cope will come home.” 

“Yes, he is coming.” 

“ Hope will be back again ! ” 

“Has Hope written you anything about herself 
lately ? Or her plans ? ” 

“Hope? Plans? Why, no. What plans should 
she have ? She never had any plans. She just kept 
on doing, and let things happen.” 

“Something has happened to Hope, Nansie.” 

“Happened! Oh, Richard! Not any harm?” 

“No. I don’t think so. A change. It seems sud- 
den, though, hearing of it all at once.” 

I could not think what he meant. Would she leave 
Mr. Cope? Would she not come home? Had she 
joined some other people who had come to know her, 
and wanted her, perhaps? To be sure, how could she 
very well stay with Mr. Cope, all alone ? And yet, 
how could she leave him alone? 

“ Why, dear little woman, you are all abroad ! ” 
said Richard, as I confusedly asked myself and him 
these questions. “I shall have to break it to you — 


FEOM OVER THE SEA. 535 

as people do break things — in one great smash. They 
say that Hope is married.” 

“Married! Oh, Richard! So soon! ” 

“ Soon, you blessed child ! What do you call soon ? 
Hope is eight and twenty, is n’t she? How long would 
you have her — or somebody else that she is saved up 
for — wait ? ” 

“ Oh, not that ! But — Augusta. It is only a few 
months. I could not think ” — 

I could not think of anything but one. And truly, 
— in the midst of my bewildered surprise, I inwardly 
thanked God for that, — I thought of it just as I said. 

“Think what?” said Richard. “What did you 
think, or not think? Did you suppose it was Mr. 
Grandon Cope ? ” 

“I thought he and Hope would marry — some 
time.” 

Richard laughed. A great, glad laugh; it was not 
only as if he were amused at me; it was as if some- 
thing lifted itself wholly and forever off his heart, at 
that moment, when I spoke those simple words. 

“Well, they won’t,” he said. “At least, not very 
probably. See here.” 

He showed me a New York newspaper, that he had 
got in town. He folded it over, and pointed to the 
list of arrivals by the steamship Cambria, from Liver- 
pool. 

There were ever so many names that were strange 
to me, of course. My eye ran down these, hastily, 
searching for short syllables that I knew. 

“H. G. Cope, and servant.” 

That was all. Then came strange names again. 

“Alexander Upfold. Mrs. Upfold and maid.” 

I let the paper drop, under my hands, upon my lap. 
It told me nothing. 

“There ’s a letter,” said Richard, in his dear, pro- 


536 


HITHERTO. 


yoking way, touching me with it under the chin, as I 
bent down, half crying with puzzle and impatience, 
over the crushed-up sheet. “Perhaps that will tell. 
My news is only hearsay.” 

It was addressed in Hope’s own clear, beautiful 
hand. 

I turned right over to the end of it, as some silly 
people turn to the end of a book. 

“Hope Upfold.” 

The letter had been begun in Florence, more than 
six weeks ago. It told me the first news, as soon as 
she had known it herself. 

“ It just came to me, ” she wrote, in her old, quaint 
fashion. “I had it before I knew. But there was a 
beautiful feeling in the world, somehow, before that, 
though I did not stop to see what it was. I have been 
very busy, you know, with Mrs. Cope. She was very 
ill at Lago Maggiore, and we were late in coming 
away. He found us there again; he had been with 
us in Rome, and he has always been so kind. Every- 
thing was always pleasanter when he came. He brought 
things to us that we could not go after. It seemed to 
me all Rome came in little bits, — of talk, and things 
to see and talk and learn about, — into that pleasant, 
high, balconied room, out of which Mrs. Cope could 
so seldom go, and where I could not often leave her 
alone. When there was only Mr. Cope, he could not 
do so much for me, because we could not both be away. 
But when Mr. Upfold came, he seemed to make every- 
thing easy. He would have a book, or a picture, or 
fresh news, or fruit and flowers to bring in to her, and 
make her cheerful with, and to brighten up Mr. Cope. 
So then she would spare me. And he took me about. 
He said he wanted to see what I should ‘notice ’ in 
Rome. He picked up that little word of mine, and 
made so much of it ! I hardly ever dare to say it now. 


FBOM OVER THE SEA. 


537 


“Do you know, he never forgot the little talk we 
had that night at Mrs. Holgate’s, all those years ago? 
He says I planted something in him then, and took 
possession, as people do with land, to claim it; and 
that the something has been growing ever since. I 
can’t tell how that may be, but a great deal has been 
planted some time! 

“You would like Mr. Upfold, Anstiss. 

“How strange it is, if I did take possession then, 
that we have both come half round the world to find 
each other, and to find out about it, now! 

“I don’t think he could have really known, any 
more than I did. It makes me think of the man that 
‘planted seed in a field, and slept and rose, night and 
day, and the seed came up and grew, he knew not 
how.’ We do not ever know what is growing for us, 
do we ? 

“I do not know what we should have done at Lago 
Maggiore, if it had not been for him. That was be- 
fore Mr. Grandon Cope came, you know. And then, 
when we came on to Florence, he came with us, and 
all the old pleasantness began again. And so — the 
other day only — he told me this that I have been 
telling you — and all the rest of it. 

“It has come to me, — just given. And now I do 
not see how I could have gone on with the rest of my 
life if it had not come. 

“I am very happy, Anstiss.” 

The letter broke olf here, and was not sent. Mrs. 
Cope was ill again, fearfully ill; and then Mr. Cope 
broke down. Grandon was there then; Alexander 
Upfold stood by them all, with his love and help, all 
through the hard, sad time; till the end came*; till the 
last faithful ministering was given, and the dear friend 
was laid at rest. 


538 


HITHERTO. 


She was buried there, at Florence. It was her 
own wish. She knew that if she did not ask this, they 
would bring her home ; and she knew that this would 
be such a terrible duty. 

“Think of me here,” she said, '‘^resting among the 
beauty. Let me lie down where the peace comes upon 
me, and think of me so. It will be better.” 

So they did as she said; and then Hope was alone 
with Mr. Cope ; except for Grandon, who had his lit- 
tle sons to hinder his perfect freedom. He came with 
them as far as England on their return, and there 
Hope and Mr. Upfold were married. Hope sent her 
letter, filled up with all its sad and sweet completion, 
by the steamer just before the one in which they sailed. 
It only got to me as she arrived in New York. 

We talked about it as/ people do talk of things. 
Over and over; trying to take hold of it closer, by 
every little corner of circumstance. 

We talked of Hope's new name. We could not, 
somehow, bear to give up the old, beautiful one that 
she was sent into the world to live. 

Yet “Hope Upfold” sounded to me full and sweet 
and noble, too. Lifted and cherished; clothed also 
with new lifting and cherishing power for others. 
Yes; Hope Upfold also was a beautiful name. 

“It never could have been that other man, you see,” 
said Martha Geddis. “It stands to reason. Hope 
Cope! Who ever went and rhymed themselves up 
after that fashion, I should like to know? I alwers 
knew it wouldn’t be, for all folks said, — and they 
did say things when he went out to Europe after his 
folks, and she there with ’em. I alwers knew it 
never ’d do, after I put them two names together in my 
own mind, and took just one single squinny at ’em.” 

“Marriages are made in heaven,” said Nurse Cryke. 


FBOM OVFB THE SEA 


539 


“But folks don’t half see what that means, either. 
The Lord takes ’em in hand; and He works slow. He 
don’t make a marriage, any more than He made the 
heavens and the earth, right off, slap, in one day. He 
takes two people, and He marries ’em all along. 
Sometimes they ’re a good deal married, in the very 
beginning; and sometimes it’s years first; and some- 
times He don’t get through with ’em as long as they 
both live. And yet folks expect it all at once, and 
just to sit down and enjoy it — here. And they 
make themselves miserable if they think there ’s any- 
thing better in this great grab-bag of a world that 
they might have lit on, and didn’t! As if they were 
bound to get the very best, or else they hadn’t made 
out. They needn’t worry nor pucker; the making 
out is further on.’^ And Nurse Cryke’s elbow ele- 
vated itself with a right-angled rush as if it were an 
inspired guideboard, set direct to the exact point in 
the Far-off where the making out would be. 

Hope saw much, and I told her something more, of 
how it had been with me ; how it was with us now, in 
our home. 

“And yet,” I said to her, talking one day of these 
things, “I can’t understand it for everybody, Hope. 
Not even according to Nurse Cryke’s doctrine. There 
would have been no excuse for me. But there are 
lives, — there are marriages, — we see them some- 
times, — where there is nothing to cling to ; where it 
is all terrible loss and mistake and wretchedness, all 
the way through. It is still the problem of the 
world. When a soul is tied to some mere brutish 
thing, in the shape of man or woman, — what then ? ” 

“Then,” said Hope, “this living is only a little 
piece, after all. Then one can bear; for the sake of 
a Love that bore all terrible contradiction of sin 


540 


lllTHEETO. 


against itself, for the sake of what that Love sees, and 
bears with hy us; for that for which also even the 
meanest one is ‘apprehended of Christ Jesus/ For 
the ‘by and by/ I saw in Rome, once, Anstiss, an 
old coin, — a silver denarius, — all coated and crusted 
with green and purple rust. I called it rust; but 
Aleck told me it was copper; the alloy thrown out 
from the silver, until there was none left. Within, it 
was all pure. It takes ages to do it; but it does get 
done. Souls are like that, Anstiss; something moves 
in them, slowly, till the debasement is all thrown out. 
Some time, the very tarnish shall be taken off.” 

Hope was Hope Devine still; she could still “see.” 


CHAPTER XLV. 


TO-DAY. 

It was a year and a half after this that our little 
girl was born. 

In the full, bright summer-tide. 

I had the pain and the peace again. But the pain 
was a joy. 

All pain is gain, I said; 

God, — He hath helped me. 

There were rhythm and rhyme measuring and utter- 
ing themselves in my heart, and this was the refrain 
they came to. 

And the peace was like the peace of heaven. 

One beautiful night, with the little daughter at my 
side, in the stillness. . 

Then there came a day of fear ; to show us how great 
our joy was. 

We almost lost her; she almost went back into 
heaven. 

Nurse Cryke sat with her on her lap in the window. 
Richard was by my bed. 

“Mr. Hathaway! Look here! ” 

What a strange voice she spoke in ! I shall never 
forget how it sounded. 

I was up on my arm with the instant impulse. 

“Mis’ Hathaway! You lay right down!” And 
she thrust out her elbow at me; then lifting it, she 
beckoned Richard nearer. 

I saw her point to the baby’s face. She whispered; 
but I heard what she said. 

“Blue spazzum! Get me some brandy! ” 


542 


HITHERTO. 


“Nurse! ” I cried. “Tell me what it is. I can’t 
he quiet unless you do.” 

“Well, it ain’t much, I guess; only it oughter to 
be seen to. A kind of a ketch in her breath, or her 
cirkleation, or something. You keep still, or less we 
shall have you to look after.” 

Richard came back with the brandy. He mixed a 
few drops in water, as Mrs. Cryke told him, and she 
gave it to the child. 

“It ’s fetched back the color a little. I guess she ’ll 
do. But I tell you I was scared! I didn’t know — 
I don’t know certain yet — but what ” — 

She whispered again, and again my sharpened senses 
caught it. 

“She might be a blue baby. And they don’t Zive.” 

“Mrs. Cryke, I hear every word. I should hear 
you think now. You must tell me every single thing. 
Richard, come here. Is she really better ? ” 

“She looks better. The doctor is coming, now. 
Don’t be frightened, Nansie. That would be worst of 
all, for all of us.” 

“No. I won’t be frightened. I will keep just as 
still! Only, you must tell me everything. I always 
know things, Richard. I shall know worse than you 
do, if you let me alone.” 

“I ’ve no doubt of that, you bad little woman,” said 
Richard. But he was pale, too. The good Richard! 
Oh, I knew God would not take back his little daugh- 
ter from him, now! 

The doctor looked grave. He could not tell, he 
said. These were obscure things; it was what we 
could not touch; we could only be very careful, and 
wait. The brandy was right, he told Nurse Cryke. 
It might have saved her life. Some stimulus, to give 
nature a start. Nature had the thing to do, if it 
were done. 


TO-DAY. 


543 


And then, presently, he sat down and told Richard 
how it was. I would not let them go away into an- 
other room. I would hear it all. 

It was a little valve, between two parts of the heart, 
that ought to close, perfectly, at birth. Sometimes it 
did not, at once. Sometimes it never did. And that 
was a “blue baby.” 

Nothing we could reach. 

Oh, little heart ! Just begun to play ! Play rightly ; 
fill perfectly with dear life! What should we do, 
Richard and I, if the little valve would not shut? If 
the tiny, awful mechanism failed, and stopped? 

“ Hold her so, ” said the doctor. “ Do not change 
her position. Do not let her he turned upon her side. 
Watch her; and if the paleness comes, give her the 
brandy. ” 

He put a pillow in the nurse’s lap, and she rested 
the baby upon it. 

We kept her on that pillow all the day; all the 
night. When bedtime came, Richard made Mrs. 
Cryke go to rest. She put the pillow on the bed be- 
side me. I asked to have it. I told them I should 
not sleep if they took her away, where I could not see, 

— could not know. I would sleep, if they would let 
me have her. 

Richard sat beside the bed all night. 

I slept because I had promised; because I knew I 
must. But every time I waked, there was the little 
face, pale, but lifelike, on the pillow, and there was 
Richard, with his eyes always on the little face. 

“She breathes better,” we said to each other. 

“She sleeps quietly.” 

“Her lips are not so white.” 

“Her nails are not so blue.” 

“I can’t help hoping,” said Richard softly. “But 

— Nansie! don’t you go to hoping!” 


644 


HITHEBTO. 


And then I would shut my eyes to please him ; say- 
ing nothing. 

Every time, the lips had a faint trace of better 
color. Every time, the little face looked somewhat 
pinker. Every time, I found Richard bending over to 
see these things, or to lift the corner of the little blan- 
ket, gently, on which rested the atom of a hand. 

“It is n’t much, yet; it don’t amount to very much; 
don’t you count upon it, Nansie; but yet — I can’t 
help hoping.” 

It was broad daylight when I roused wholly, after 
a long, sweet nap, into which I fell with Richard’s 
words repeating themselves, soothingly, in my brain. 

“I can’t help — I can’t help — hoping! ” 

He sat there just as he had sat all night. 

The dear little bit of a face, warm with sleep, was 
almost rosy. There was no blueness around the mouth, 
nor under the little, tender nails. We looked up, 
together, from it. 

“I don’t hardly dare to say it, Nansie; and you 
must n’t believe it, till, the doctor comes. But — that 
valve ’s shut 1 ” 

I suppose it was. I suppose the wonderful mys- 
tery, beyond our ken and handling, had perfected its 
own office; that the little beat and count were estab- 
lished that should be the pulse of a human life. 

For it has beat on, and we still have our child. 

“ It was so strange, ” we said, after our breath came 
freely, and the days went by. “All hung upon a lit- 
tle, trembling membrane, out of our reach, that might 
draw close, or that might not. How little we know 
about the valves, — any of them ! ” 

“Yes,” said Nurse Cryke, jerking up both elbows 
at once, as she finished the baby’s toilette with a little 
pin in the laced robe-front, and drew all smoothly 
down, “But the beauty of that is. that we haven’t 


jo-D^r. 545 

got to do with the valves. All we ’ve got to do is to 
go ahead and breathe.^'’ 

I thought how all my life I had been feeling for the 
valves. 

“What shall we call her? ” Richard asked of me. 

“Why, there is only one name! We christened her 
all that night. Hope. What a little Hope it was, 
when you kept telling me I shouldn’t! ” 

“And yet,” I said again, “it won’t be Hope De- 
vine, after all. There never was such a true name as 
that. ” 

“ This is true, too, and cheery. It tells the rest of 
it. Hope Hath a way I ” 

One thing happened, a few weeks after, that I can 
never think of without a great throb of humble love, 
and a great shudder also, at the weight of punishment 
it showed me might have been. 

Richard sat in our room, holding little Hope in his 
arms. 

Nurse Cryke had gone, and I was busy at some 
drawers, putting away and changing things, and mak- 
ing cosy, comfortable arrangements for settling down 
to the sole care of my little child. 

It was curious and touching to see Richard hold that 
tender little thing in his great, strong arms, and lift 
it against his broad, sheltering bosom. She rested 
there like a little wind-flower born against a hillside. 

He looked in the tiny face as if the fair, innocent 
eyes and the dawning smile told years full of blessed 
stories to him for the time to come. 

Suddenly he reached her out to me. 

“For the dear heaven’s sake, Anstiss, take the 
child I I ’ve got something that I must attend to be- 
fore I’m an hour older! Don’t wait tea for me. 


546 


HITHERTO. 


I ’m going in to New Oxford, to see Joim Proctor. 
He ’ll be married and off to-morrow! ” 

Five minutes after, he went out of the yard, on 
horseback. I could hear Swallow’s feet strike into 
their swiftest trot as he went down the hill. 

After that he could not help answering my questions 
when he came home. I don’t know whether he might 
have done it, if he had not startled me so, and left 
me in such an astonishment. 

“I wanted to get this,” he told me, taking out a 
folded paper from his breast-pocket, long and legal- 
looking. 

He had come into the little tea-room, and Martha 
had just put the tray on the table for him, and gone 
out again into the kitchen. 

“I ’ve torn the signature off, and now it must go 
into the fire. I made my will, Nansie, four years 
ago. That is all. When w^e hadn’t any little Hope, 
you know.” 

Yes, I knew. I knew that the word was true with 
a significance that he did not purposely put into it. 

I reached my hand out and took it from him. I 
would see this will of Richard’s, before he burned it. 
I would see what thought had been in his heart four 
years ago; when he hadn’t any little hope! 

He let me have it, though I think it had hardly 
been his meaning.- 

I took it to the window, to read it by the waning 
light, while he drank his tea. 

I read a new page in his great, generous, silent life. 

I saw where, in a fresh point, his manhood touched, 
as I had demanded that manhood should, the Naturv^ 
Divine; the Nature that can care for the unthankful 
and the evil ; the loving, giving, and forgiving God. 

J sat there still, in the gathering dusk. My tears 
fell down, hot, upon the unfolded paper. 


TO-DAY. 547 

Richard turned round, presently, wondering. Then 
he got up and came over to me. 

“Why, Nansie! ” he said. “Little wifie! ” 

“ Oh, Richard ! ” I sobbed, with my hands in his, 
and my head bowed down upon them. “If this had 
come to me then, — two years ago, — I should have 
gone away, like Judas, and hanged myself.” 

All those are old times, now; to Hope, and little 
Hope, and Richard, and me. We talk them over, 
some of them, when we are together. 

Little Hope is fifteen now. 

Hope Upfold lives at South Side. Her husband 
built a house there, near the Copes. The neighbor- 
hood is wider now, and rich with cultured and friendly 
life. Hope’s life has widened, also, to its privilege 
and power. It is large and beautiful. 

She has three glorious boys, and a fair little daugh- 
ter, Anstiss. 

Grandon Cope has never married. 

He is the true, strong, outgiving friend of us all. 

I said that people who would tell of to-day should 
wait until it had become yesterday. They may do 
better. They may wait till the yesterdays, in their 
turn, have become to-day. For that is what they do. 
That is what they are made for, and the process of 
them. All God’s yesterdays make up his grand to- 
day. When the soul wakes to the light of his mean- 
ing for it, its morning has begun. 

I thank Him that I see mine high already over the 
j*orizon. For now, I am up the hill ; and the top is 
a green table-land; like the grand, beautiful reaches 
that lie beyond the edges of wild, precipitous western 
bluffs, toward the sunset; a long, fertile joy. 

And, beyond the sunset, are the Hills of God. 







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